


i am the hollow man (he is tomorrow’s man)

by Murf1307



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe
Genre: After Some Thought i’m tagging it as regular Clex too because this canon made weird choices, Alien Technology, Cocktail parties, Developing Relationship, Enemies to Lovers, Explosions, First Date, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mad Science, Masturbation, References to Past Child Abuse, Trans Male Character, Trans Man Lex Luthor, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Visions, Wealth Porn, [glares at the ‘jr’ specification], this fandom is very inconvenient to tag for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 01:11:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17132198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: Instead of engaging in risky, international operations to destroy Superman, Lex decides to go a more personal, safer route: seducing “Clark Kent,” so he can destroy the lie from the inside.  Every monster, after all, can pretend to be good — so why should Lex be any different?





	i am the hollow man (he is tomorrow’s man)

**Author's Note:**

> merry christmas, clex discord server!
> 
> thanks to thomas for beta-reading!

* * *

 

“ _This_ _broken_ _city_ _sky_ , _like_ _butane_ _on_ _my_ _skin_  
_Stolen from my eyes:  
Hello_ _angel_ , _tell_ _me_ , _where_ _are_ _you_?”

— “Skylines & Turnstiles” by My Chemical Romance

 

* * *

 

_MANKIND ENCOUNTERS THE SUPERMAN._

 

It's a knife to his guts as the men in the sky battle each other, slamming through the buildings of Metropolis like tissue paper.

Lex is in his penthouse; he'd been building a tower above LexCorp HQ to move into, but he imagines that will have to be pushed back now.  If there is a tomorrow, if the sun does rise over Metropolis, it may well be a city in ruins by then.

 _Kal-El._ That's what the alien broadcast had called the streak of red and blue shooting through the sky.  An alien.

An _alien._

Humanity is in possession of incontrovertible proof that we are not alone in the universe.

Lex has dreamed of the discovery of alien life _his_ whole life, but not like this.  Not an invasion, not the destruction of what is _his._ Metropolis is _his_ city, and he cannot keep it.  His position is no longer assured, his power unstable.

He watches, tip of his nose resting delicately against the full-length window, watching.

He is no longer _safe._

Alexander the Great died at almost thirty-three, he reminds himself.  He is still hanging on to thirty-one by a hair. If he goes now, it wouldn't suit the narrative he's built for himself.

Mercy is stalwart at his shoulder, and if he ordered it, she would die here with him.  He thinks that might make her the closest thing he has to family.

He cannot tear his eyes away from the aliens tearing his city apart.

He feels empty, now, hollow against the violence, because he is powerless to stop or control it.  The feeling helped him survive his father, saving him the worst of the pain. But he'd sworn, when the man was dead, he would never feel that cavernous feeling again.

Seems like time made a liar of him.

The one thing he prayed for as a child — someone, anyone, with the power to destroy his father's world, an angel of vengeance, has finally arrived on Earth.  But Lex is no longer a child. He has become his own kind of monster to kill the one who raised him, and claimed a city as his own.

Power corrupts.  

It is in this moment, as his world falls down around him, he rediscovers another maxim that once defined his life:

The _lack_ of power, conversely, purifies.

The empty cavern of his ribcage yearns for one thing and one thing only, and that is the destruction of the wolves on his doorstep, the monsters who fell from the sky.

Finally, he tears his eyes from the crumbling city and turns to Mercy.

He is calm.  The world inside this penthouse is deadly silent.  Outside, Metropolis screams in despair, and he is only vaguely aware of the sound.

“I want every piece of surveillance footage we can recover from this.”

One of Sun Tzu's most relevant commandments: _Know thyself; know thy enemy._

From there, all things are possible.

 

* * *

 

_Eighteen Months Later…_

 

He has spent the last year and a half waiting for this moment, he thinks.  Eighteen months of study, of experimentation, of making decisions that will, eventually, change the face of the world as radically as Superman has.

 _Clark Joseph Kent_ .  An unassuming enough name.  “Clark” wasn’t a particularly _popular_ baby name in the eighties, but it has the _sound_ of a country boy.  It’s the name of a farmer’s son, and that’s been the story ever since; Clark Kent, the son of Jonathan and Martha Kent, of Smallville, Kansas.  Attended college through several online programs while living a nomadic lifestyle; returned to the continental U.S. shortly before the Battle of Metropolis.

Now, he works for the Daily Planet, alongside luminaries like Perry White and Lois Lane.  For nearly a year, he and Lane dated, then amicably parted.

This life is a lie.  Lex knows that like he knows his own name.  

Clark Kent is Kal-El, the alien known as _Superman_.  

Tonight, Lex will set in motion a plan to destroy the lie, and with it, the liar.

Tonight, he will meet Clark Kent.

Metropolis Public Library has its gala every year, and Lex is its primary sponsor.  He has, ultimately, control of the guest list, and the press presence.

Clark Kent will attend, and Lex will meet him, and hopefully, it will go well.

Also attending may be Bruce Wayne, who Lex has been stringing along for a different purpose — as his failsafe.  The Bat in the night, Gotham’s prince and protector; Lex can dance him like a puppet in a hundred different ways.

Batman and Superman will meet tonight, and the only one who’ll know is him.

He chooses burgundy and black for his suit, in a tighter cut than that he usually favors.  There will be cameras, of course, and Mr. _Kent_.

Eventually, time draws short and Lex heads upstairs to play host; his basement level R&D labs will essentially monitor themselves in his absence.  As he climbs the stairs, his chest begins to tighten, his breath shallowing just a hair.

Oh, how he has _always_ hated things like this.  Rooms full of powerful liars pretending to be friends.

Tonight, though, is different.  Tonight has more at stake than any of his guests might dream in their philosophies.  Tonight, everything must begin anew, and so Lex forces the feeling down in his gut, knowing that he, too, has lies to tell tonight.

“And now, the man of the hour, one of our most generous donors, Lex Luthor!”

He ascends to the microphone and begins, chuckling nervously as he tells her she's embarrassing him.  He fumbles through a joke about the open bar.

“The word _philanthropist_ comes from the Greek,” he begins, scanning the crowd. He doesn't get the Greek mythology right, on purpose, because the woman is here, too.  He wants to see her react.

She rolls her eyes.  He proceeds into an anecdote about the importance of public libraries, emphasizing his father as a man who once was so poor he had to root for newspapers in the trash.  It's likely true, but Lex can't remember now.

“Books are knowledge, and knowledge is power, and I am...no.  Um, no. What am I — what was I saying?” He sees him, there, in an unassuming grey suit and horn-rimmed glasses.  

A beauty by any human standard, and Lex hates him.

“The bittersweet pain among men,” he says, eyes scattering the room, because he cannot, _cannot_ look at Superman, “is having knowledge but no power, because...because that is _paradoxical,_ and…”

He cuts himself off.  Not the time. “Uh, thank you for coming.”

He vanishes, making for the bathroom.  He splashes water on his face, scowling.  He embarrassed himself at that microphone.  He _cannot_ do that again.

Returning to the main room of the party, he scans the crowd again.

And there they are!  He approaches, suddenly nearly giddy.

“Boys!  Mm!” He opens, interrupting a conversation he finds genuinely hilarious in its dramatic irony.  “Bruce Wayne meets Clark Kent. I love it! I love bringing people together.

Mister Wayne can't hide his exasperation, and that, in and of itself, warms Lex.  He likes needling Wayne when he has the opportunity.

“How are we?” Lex asks Bruce, shaking his hand with more force than he needs to.

“Lex,” Bruce replies, but Lex interrupts before he can say anything else:

“Hello, good.” He turns from Bruce to Clark Kent, briskly taking his hand in turn and introducing himself: “Hi, hello, Lex, it is a pleas — ow!  Wow, that is a good grip.” He swats Kent's chest, playfully. Then, he turns back to Bruce: “You do not want to pick a fight with this person.”

He supposes this is his _Hamlet,_ the mask he wears at things like this, but it's also _play_.  He enjoys it.

“Huh, so after all these years, we finally got you over to Metropolis,” he says, teasingly, to Bruce.  It's true — Lex sends him invitations to everything, and has long before the Superman appeared.

Hell, he's wanted Bruce Wayne since he was a _teenager_.

“Well, I thought I’d come drink you dry.”  Bruce’s joke falls a little flat, because there is no genuine fondness underneath the teasing.

Huh.  Maybe the Bat has him all tired out?

“Well, you’re welcome.  You should hop the harbor more often, though.  I’d love to show you my labs; maybe we could partner on something.  My R & D is up to all _sorts_ of no good.”  He smirks, and he’s about to touch Bruce again when Mercy appears at his shoulder.

The Governor wants his presence, so he bids the boys adieu instead.

God, sometimes, he _loves_ his life.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Lex has a green carnation sent to the _Daily Planet_.

On a slip of paper tied to it, his personal phone number, initialed ‘L.L.’ in green ink.  He’d hemmed and hawed a little about whether to leave a message.

But the Superman is at least clever enough to _google_ , he imagines.

Late in the afternoon, he receives the phone call he’s been waiting for — of course, he already has Clark Kent’s phone number saved as a contact.

“Hello?” he asks, a polite pretense.

“Hello, uh, is this Lex Luthor, by any chance?” Kent sounds confused.  Good.

Lex hums.  “Mhmm. And might this be Clark Kent?”  He’s practically purring, a calculated move.  Every part of this conversation has been planned, down to the word.

(He has flow charts.)

A pause.  “Yes. So that flower…?”

“You interest me,” Lex says, and that isn’t even the half of it.  “And you left my party early.”

“Something came up,” Kent says, mock-casual, and Lex knows exactly _what_ came up: a fire in Mexico.  The pictures are particularly on-the-nose, in Lex’s not-at-all-humble opinion.

Of _course_ fools would supplicate themselves before Superman.  Of course they would.

He chuckles a little.  “Well, would you like to make it up to me?”

Another pause.  “What, exactly, would that entail?”

“Come to dinner.  Off the record, of course.” He must still guard himself, after all.  It's been — well, about a dozen years since he last made a date with someone.  Not since his father's “accident.”

“That's...forward, Mr. Luthor.” Frankly, Kent sounds bewildered.

“In my personal life, I often am.” He smirks.  “And please, call me Lex. My _father_ was Mr. Luthor.” He almost sounds teasing, frankly.

“Okay, Lex,” he says.  “When and where?”

It’s strange, hearing his name on Superman’s lips.  A slick sense of dread drips down his back, but he responds: “I’ll have Mercy bring a car around,” he says, voice casually disinterested in actually answering the question.  “What time does your workday end?”

“It...depends.”

“Prone to extra hours?” Lex teases.

Kent exhales audibly.  “Chasing a story that's not...exactly what I was assigned.”

“Six o'clock, then,” Lex says.  “We'll see you.”

He's curious, of course — the one thing he can't explain when it comes to Superman is why he would keep up the ruse at all.  Why bother working a mortal job? Why bother with any of it?

This is part of why he's chosen _this_ method of destruction; it will also sate his curiosity.

“All right.  Uh, how dressed up do I need to be?”

“I imagine the Planet's dress code is business casual?” He knows damn well it is.  “Alternatively, what are you wearing?”

A moment of silence, and then, “A dress shirt and slacks, and dress shoes?”

“Good, that helps.”  He wonders if Kent thought he would start some kind of phone sex shenanigan right then and there, but he’s not that kind of man.

He has, after all, _no_ plans to fuck on the first date.

“All right,” Kent says, still awkward but clearly pushing through it.  “See you tonight, then, it looks like?”

“Yes,” Lex agrees.  “See you tonight.”

He hangs up and leans back in his chair.  That went exactly how he'd hoped it would, and he smirks a little.

Superman will have no idea what hit him.

 

* * *

 

Lex and Mercy arrive at the Planet in a sleek, predatory-looking black Porsche Spyder.  It's only a two-seater, but Mercy's evening off begins as soon as Clark Kent appears, so it won't be a problem.

Lex and Mercy get out of the car.  Mercy's back is ram-rod straight; Lex's hip is cocked against the door.

They get a few stares, as beautiful people do, but in this part of town people are too polite to stop to gawk, merely rubbernecking a little as they go by.  Lex enjoys the attention.

Kent exits the Planet, and Lex is almost impressed by the way he so convincingly trips coming through the door.  If Lex didn't know the truth, he'd never believe the accusation. But, knowing the truth, he can't unsee it.

A talented liar, this Kal-El.  

Then again, “heroes” always are.

That sour thought is interrupted when Kent approaches, keeping a respectful distance.  “Uh, hi.”

“Hi,” Lex mirrors.  He tilts his head toward Mercy.  “See you tomorrow, Mercy.”

Mercy nods, still eerily silent in her way, and leaves them there on the sidewalk, her pace quick and the staccato of her high heels lighter than he expects.  He'd never been any good in high heels, really.

“Mercy's my personal assistant,” he says to Kent.  “I thought she'd prefer not to be included for this.”

His tone is light, joking.  Kent smiles a little.

“Now, shall we?” Lex asks, gesturing at the car.  “Our reservation is for six-thirty, and I don't want to risk too much traffic on the way.”

Kent moves toward the car.  “Okay,” he says, nodding.

Lex opens the passenger side door before hopping in himself, sliding behind the wheel.  “I like driving, honestly,” he says. “People are often surprised by that.”

Kent gets in as well.  “It's a beautiful car,” he compliments, his hand running along the door.

“Thank you.  It's a Porsche Spyder.” He's not entirely sure what else to say.  “...Do you drive?”

“Not lately,” Kent says.  “It's not really necessary, around here.”

Lex nods.  “That's admittedly true.”

They drift into silence.  It's not any more uncomfortable than most silences are for Lex, so he just pushes through it until they're drawing close to the restaurant.  “I read your piece,” he says. “The curious little aside about Batman was particularly interesting.”

“You think so?” Kent asks, perking up a little.  “My editor wasn't all that impressed.”

Lex chuckles, and is a little surprised to find that he means it.  “Yes,” he says. “It's rare to find anything interesting in those kinds of stories.  They're glorified press releases, frankly.”

“I'm not interested in doing that kind of journalism,” Kent says, shaking his head.  “I'd much rather be investigating something...well, something important, you know?” He sighs.  “It's just... frustrating. I've been talking to people in Gotham, and they're _afraid._ ”

The conviction in his voice doesn't sound manufactured.

Lex pushes the observation away with a reminder to himself that Superman is a source of fear, too.  His own, most importantly. “Are you sure it's any of your business, though? I mean, it _is_ Gotham.”

“Someone needs to look into this,” Kent insists.  “And nobody else seems to want to.”

“Except you.  Are you going to take on the Batman all by your lonesome?”  He's about to ask a further question when he realizes that he's passed the restaurant.  “Damnit, we have to turn around.”

He catches a glimpse of Kent smiling a little out of the corner of his mouth.  It makes him fume internally, a little.

But it doesn't show.  He just makes an illegal U-turn at the next light, whipping around quickly to avoid traffic.  At the cacophony of horns behind them, he just raises his hand and flips off whoever is complaining.

“Did you just —” Kent sounds stunned.  “That was _so_ , so dangerous.”

Lex shrugs.  “They'll get over it,” he says, with only a little irritation coloring his voice.  “And nothing actually happened, so it's a moot point.” He pulls the car up to the curb across from the restaurant.

Kent shakes his head, seemingly dumbfounded.

Lex turns the car off and hops out before heading around to get Kent's door.  It's a date, and holding doors for a date was the polite thing to do, wasn't it?

“Thanks,” Kent says, nodding.  

He doesn't seem to have a problem with jaywalking as they cross the street together, which Lex finds interesting but doesn't mention aloud.

There's a valet at the door to the restaurant, and Lex absently tosses the man his keys before opening the door for Kent.

Kent looks at him, measuring, but he walks inside.

Lex isn't sure why that look makes something tighten in his chest, but he shoves the feeling down as he follows Kent inside.

 

* * *

 

The date, ultimately, goes better than Lex expected.  They both make for charming liars, and Kent tells genuinely interesting stories.

Lex has always enjoyed a good story, even as much as he hates a liar.

“Lex,” Kent says, amidst the dessert course, “why exactly were you so interested in seeing me like this?”

Lex shrugs one shoulder.  “I like your work in the _Planet,_ and I'm sure you're aware you're an attractive man, Clark.” It's strange, that name on his tongue but not in his head.  “I thought it at least would be worth asking.”

Kent smiles a little.  “And was it?”

He pauses, pretending to really give the question some thought.  “Yes, I think so. And it certainly may be worth a second date, too.”

“I’d like that,” Kent says mildly, smiling just a little.  “It's been...nice. A little surreal, but nice.”

Lex nods.  It would be easy, if he didn’t know the things he knows, to just take all of this at face value, to just...enjoy Kent’s company.  

He knows better, but, still, it would be _easy_.

 

* * *

 

Kent insists on seeing him home, smiling sheepishly and saying something about country manners; his mother would be horrified to find he _hadn’t_ made sure his date got home safely.

Yes, Lex imagines that stalwart Martha Kent would expect no less of the child she raised.

“I had a nice time,” Kent says, as they stop in front of the LexCorp building.  “Would you mind if I called you?”

Lex blinks, surprised Kent would ask — normally, contact is assumed if the date went well, right?  And this date went exactly as it was supposed to. It takes him a moment to respond. “Please do,” he says, nodding.

Kent smiles down at him, and the seven inch height difference is maddening.

 _Especially_ when Kent leans down and takes the liberty of a kiss — barely a brush of one, before the man pulls back, blushing.  “Sorry — I just — was that all right?”

Lex, suddenly flooding with adrenaline, yanks Kent down by his tie for a proper kiss. His mouth pressed to Kent's, his free hand on the man's bicep, and while it's not the first kiss he's had since his father's death, it still feels alarming and strange.

He pulls back, composing himself.  “Uh, yes. Um, thank you.”

And then he slips inside, walking as fast as he can without seeming suspicious until he gets to the elevator.  

He slumps against the wall, his heart a hummingbird in his chest as he presses his thumb to the fingerprint scanner that will send the elevator car to his penthouse.

The kisses lingers against his mouth, tingling, and it really _has_ been too long since he's gotten laid.

He gets upstairs and walks over to his bed, flinging himself onto it with a groan.  Kent had tasted like the brownie tower they'd shared during dessert, and Lex wonders if it's the lingering sugar that makes it hard to stop the sensory feeling.

He presses his fingers to his lips.  He _kissed_ the _Superman_.

As far as he knows, he is the only one besides Lois Lane to have knowingly had that privilege.  And Kent kissed him first; Kent _wanted_ to kiss him.

It follows: Kent _wants_ him.

His brain sinks sideways into that thought, and he begins to wonder: what would it be _like,_ to have him in his bed?

Kent would be careful, in the beginning.  He has his secrets to keep.

That's the first thing, Lex thinks, the thing above all.  Kent would keep his touch light, especially in delicate places.  The secret is too precious to risk harming him, and that would have to reflect in his touch.

Lex's fingers trail from his mouth to his throat.  Would he be able to convince Kent to choke him? Coax him, goad him into a reminder of why Lex needs to kill him?  His own hand tightens against his windpipe, still measured, still careful, but the thought is as heady as the oxygen deprivation.

Where would Kent's other hand go?  Lex's free hand starts unbuttoning his shirt.   _Yes_ , that would be what happened next.

Underneath, his binder might trip Kent up, but Lex skips past that in the fantasy; he doesn't _want_ to think about that part.  Instead, his hand skates lower, and undoes his belt.  The hand on his throat would release, he thinks, would come to his face again — Kent is clearly the kind who kisses, and this is where a kiss would go.

He undoes his fly, pops his hips up to tug his pants and underwear down.  He's _wet_ , now, and it would just be a natural reaction then, too, but his hand pauses on his inner thigh anyway.

What would Kent do next?  Would he use his fingers? His mouth?

He doubts that Kent would go straight to fucking; from the couple hours spent in the man’s company, it would follow that he's the type to enjoy foreplay.  He's probably more used to women, and Lex's cunt reacts differently after a decade of testosterone, and, of course, Kent would be conscientious about making it _good_ for him.

He brushes two fingers over his clit, then strokes it, testingly.  He's stiff and wet, and this is fucked up, but when has his sex life ever _not_ been?

Kent would be careful, tentative, at first, focused on his clit; Lex strokes it between his fingers.  He imagines that then, Kent’s fingers would travel downward. He’s always been careful with this -- he may have hated being taken for a woman, but he _liked_ to be fucked, and that meant taking care of his fucking pussy.

Kent’s fingers would be thicker than his own, so he starts with two, breaching the tight opening with a soft noise; as wet as he is, two fingers is more than he normally would begin with, and the sting is bright.

He moves them in a slow, exploratory way, testing for his g-spot, then diving deep, pressing inside him up to the knuckles, and he knows that Kent’s fingers are longer, but this is as much as he can manage right now, without any of his toys.  Then, he adds a third finger, moaning as he stretches himself for a man who isn’t there.

Kent’s cock is probably bigger, he thinks, his other hand thumbing his clit.  He moans at the idea, at the _work_ it would be, for Kent to restrain himself enough to keep the secret.

If Lex wanted it hard and fast, he knows he’d have to ride the Superman.  He’ll focus on that next time, though, because he’s riding the line in this moment, anyway, finger-fucking himself as deep and hard as he’s able from this position.  

He flicks his clit hard, and that sting of pain is what pushes him over the edge.  He comes silently, like always, his jaw hanging open as he tenses and pulses around his fingers, his hips canting up even as the pleasure begins to transmute into oversensitive pain again.  

Eventually, he goes limp, yanks his fingers free to wipe them on the flat sheet, and stares at the ceiling.  It’s smooth and white, non-textured like the plastic walls of his lab, and it is just as unforgiving.

 _Whore_ , comes the unbidden thought.   _You’d do it.  You’d whore yourself to deliver mankind, wouldn’t you?_

He tries to ignore it; the voice in his head has the tone of his father's, violent in its cold stillness.

He's only doing what needs to be done.  His own survival, and the world's, hang on this plan of his, on this concept.

_You know you don’t need to, but that’s what you’d do.  Because you're a goddamn whore, and that's that._

Tears sting at his eyes, but he has to admit:

It’s true.

 

* * *

 

When he’s gotten himself back together, he heads downstairs to his computers.  It’s time, certainly, to get back to business.

He’s been surveilling anyone who could possibly be a threat to him — Batman, the Flash, Diana Prince, Arthur Curry, and Dr. Stone and his son, right now, but someday, there could be more.  He refuses, point-blank, to be caught unawares, the way he was with Superman.

He boots up the feeds.  Dr. Stone has custody of a strange, alien cube, and Lex has yet to get access to it.  

Prince is studiously avoiding him, though he’s sure she knows she’s being watched.  She simply doesn’t care. Apathy has characterized her movements, besides her urge to reclaim the symbols of her past.

He doesn’t understand her, but he doesn’t need to.

Arthur Curry is harder to find — he disappears for weeks on end, though Lex has begun to recognize patterns in his movements.

Batman has no idea what Lex is doing, and that brings a smirk to his face.  He’s been watching Bruce for years — his only rival, and now, Superman’s only rival, and isn’t that poetic?

Barry Allen, the Flash, is the easiest to surveil, because he’s a college student with a very distinct schedule.  It doesn’t take much at all to shadow him.

He watches the feeds for hours, taking notes to try and determine who is _currently_ a threat to him, or, more importantly, a threat to _Superman_.

Eventually, he falls asleep in his chair.

 

* * *

 

_Lex?_

The text comes, somehow unexpectedly, and Lex nearly ends the board meeting right there to answer it.  Instead, he just replies, under the table, _yes?_

A minute or two, and then a reply.   _Hey.  I had a great time last night.  Are you still interested in a second date?_

Perfect.  The plan is proceeding _perfectly._

_of course; any preferences?  anything you've always wanted to do, but never had the chancw?_

He leaves the typo, for verisimilitude.

_Honestly, I was just hoping I could take you to a movie.  There's this horror movie I thought you might like, an indie thing._

That, Lex has to say, isn't a response he was prepared for.

_whts it about?_

He isn't paying the meeting any more attention; Mercy will fill him in later if it's anything that requires him personally to deal with it.

_A closeted trans girl, haunted by the spirits of the man she could pretend to be and the woman she wishes she could become.  One of my friends from high school is in it, and she wrote it._

Lex exhales. He knows his transition is a matter of public record, but people generally don't bring up trans people or issues around him — preferring to pretend that _Lexi Luthor_ never existed — and so, he's a little gobsmacked that Kent even thought about it.

It takes him a moment to collect himself, and then he replies.   _sounds like it could either go really well or really bad._

_Chloe's trans, so I think it'll be okay?_

Lex _really_ should have looked more closely into Kent's high school classmates.

_sounds good then.  when and where?_

_I'll pick you up at seven on Friday, if that's okay?_

_sounds great :)_

Kent sends back a smiley face of his own, and that's the end of the conversation, it seems.

Lex leans back in his chair.

Well _shit._  That did not go as planned, at all.

 

* * *

 

That's how most of the week goes, with one of them texting the other something banal or funny, and Lex's whole day crashes to a halt as a result.

The worst offender is the selfie Kent sends him on Thursday afternoon, grinning at his desk, with Lois Lane half in frame, rolling her eyes.  It's captioned “Lois says hi, by the way,” but Lex couldn't care about Lane in this picture if his life depended on it.

He's too caught up in the quality of Kent's smile, how genuine it all looks.  How blue his eyes are. His perfect teeth.

(He can't help but think of those teeth ripping out his throat, in his darker moments.)

He returns fire with a selfie of his own, framed against the pool table, his button down unbuttoned by a couple buttons, providing a glimpse of his clavicle.  He wonders what Kent will think of that, if he's the kind of man who jerks off, if he'd do it at work.

Do Kryptonians even jerk off?

His train of thought is interrupted by Mercy in the doorway.  “Mr. Luthor?”

“Yeah?”

“The Kryptonite shipment docks tomorrow night, and there are import papers you need to sign.” Mercy steps into the room as he straightens up, buttoning his shirt back up.

He nods.  “Right.”

She brings him the paperwork, which he scans.  It's all exactly according to plan. The ship will dock on tomorrow night in Gotham.  Batman will steal it, providing a weapon he can use against Superman — the backup plan, if Lex can't destroy him himself.

But...hm.  The Bat has gotten colder, crueler, since the last Robin died.

He might not wait.

Lex needs more time.

He looks up at Mercy.  “Can we reroute the ship to Metropolis?”

She considers the idea.  “Yes. We may need to grease a few palms, though, on such short notice.”

“Do it,” he says, waving his hand dismissively.

After all, he has a _date_.

He can't spend the evening checking his phone, trying to determine if Batman's stolen some rocks.

 

* * *

 

Lex spends an _hour_ Friday afternoon trying to decide what he's wearing on this date with Kent.

It's an indie movie theatre.  Theoretically, any of his casual wear would be fine, but his arms are too wiry to wear a t-shirt without something over it, and a blazer would be too formal.

A dress shirt without anything over it would also be a little on the formal side.  But in the event of something _happening_ between them after the movie, a sweater over a dress shirt would be too much of a hassle to take off, and he _likes_ how he looks in a button down.

Sighing, he goes through the hangers again.

He looks at his sweaters again.  There’s one he might be able to wear with just his binder underneath.  And long sleeves never make his arms look as skinny as t-shirts do.

Hm.  This just might do, he decides, and puts it on.  

He turns around in the mirror.  It’s casual, reasonably warm, looks good, and will be easy to take off, so really, it’s the perfect top for this scenario.

He checks the clock, and _shit_ , Kent’s gonna be here any minute, if he’s punctual, and he seems like the kind of person who tries to be.  Lex shrugs on a wool winter coat and heads downstairs to wait for him.

Kent arrives barely a minute later, about five minutes earlier than the agreed-upon time.

“Lex,” Kent says, warmly.  “I, uh, I’ve got a taxi waiting.”

It’s endearing, almost, and Lex does his best to immediately squash that feeling.  Outwardly, though, he smiles at Kent “Sounds great.”

He follows him out to the curb, where, indeed, a taxi is waiting for them.  Lex hasn’t taken a cab anywhere since he was in college, so the experience is a little novel.  “So, where are we going?”

“The Talon Theatre,” Kent says.  “It’s a dine-in theater, in case you’re hungry.”

“I appreciate it,” Lex says, nodding.  “I’ll probably just have popcorn, though.”

Kent nods, as the taxi starts to move.  “Me too, probably. It just...it sort of feels traditional, you know?  Going to see a movie and getting popcorn, I mean.”

“Fair point,” he concedes.  “My mom got me one of those movie theatre popcorn machines for my sixth birthday.”

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he flinches.

 _No one_ , but _especially not Superman,_ needs to know a damn thing about his mother.  He's come to grips with her death being the root cause of his childhood circling the drain, but that just means he shouldn't have to talk about her anymore.

Kent has the gall to _laugh._  “Wow.  That must've been expensive.”

“I imagine it was.  I was six, so I didn't ask.”

“That's understandable.” Kent smiles at him, and Lex feels like he's dying on the inside.

It's not a long taxi ride, so the fact that conversation peters out doesn't concern Lex all that much.  He figures Kent is a little quieter, a little more concerned with only saying the _right_ things.  The _safe_ things.

They arrive at the theater, and Kent pays the cab fare in cash.  Lex wonders, apropos of nothing, whether Kent even _has_ a proper credit card.

He might research that when he gets home, if the night goes poorly.

Just in case.

His phone buzzes, and he glances down at the notification.

_Mercy: Your delivery arrived.  It's in the lockbox._

Good.  Good. For now, he doesn't want the Bat to have the Kryptonite.  He won't invite this theft until he's good and ready, damnit.

He doesn't respond, slipping his phone back into his pocket as they reach the ticket counter of the movie theater.  It's a well-appointed little thing, if old-fashioned — Hollywood Regency style, if he remembers that one correctly.

“Bit of a throwback,” he murmurs, as they move toward the specific theatre the movie's playing in.

“There was one like this in Smallville when I was a kid,” Kent says.  “It's a coffee shop now, I think.”

“Do they get Starbucks out in Kansas?” Lex asks, and realizes that his teasing isn't mean-spirited in the least.

That's…concerning, to say the least.

Kent laughs.  “Yes, but not in Smallville.  We're one of those small towns that's really committed to local businesses, and always have been, as far as I can tell.”

“You know, Clark, sometimes it's hard to believe you're a real person,” Lex shakes his head.

“I get that a lot, living here.” He smiles a little, and _shit._

Maybe a second date was a mistake.

By the end of the movie, they're holding hands across the little bartop table they've been seated at, and Lex is actually pretty impressed with the movie, especially given it was clearly shot with about zero budget.

The way his heart is pounding has nothing to do with the horror movie, though.

He finds that he wants this man, and so, there’s only one thing to do:

He has to bring him home with him.

 

* * *

 

“So, uh, do you wanna come in for coffee, or something?” he asks Clark when they arrive at Lex's palatial home on the edge of the city.  It's bigger than the penthouse, and part of Lex is curious as to how Clark will respond to it in a context beyond the Library Gala.

Wait.  When did he start calling him _Clark_ in his head?

He pushes that aside for later, and Clark gives him a little smile.  “Yeah, actually. I'd love to.”

They're still holding hands, and so Lex leads Clark by the hand into the house.  It takes a minute to get through the security protocols, and he probably _shouldn't_ be doing this.

But he's been doing a lot of things he shouldn't, lately, so what's one more?

Just inside, he pauses at the intercom, flipping the switch.  “Computer,” he says. The intercom beeps in answer. “Send pot of coffee and two mugs to study.”

“ _Estimated time of arrival: 7 minutes, forty five seconds.”_

“Thank you.” Lex flicks the switch back to 'off' and turns to Clark.  “Sorry, uh, I have some robots?”

Clark laughs.  “You really live the wildest life, Lex.”

“Money will do that,” Lex says, tugging Clark towards the study.  It's his father's, and he thinks he'll need his father's metaphorical ghost to keep him from doing something very ill-advised tonight.

Because Lex _wants,_ and that's a terrible idea.

The room is silent when they enter, air weighty as the grave.  Lex's eyes catch on the painting, as always, of the defeat of Lucifer at the hands of the archangel Michael.

“Is this your study?” Clark asks, softly breaking Lex's focus.

“My father's,” Lex murmurs.  “I keep it exactly as he left it, as a reminder.”

Clark nods.  “I can understand that.”

No, he couldn't.  Lex has researched enough to be able to say with certainty that Clark's relationship to Jonathan Kent is nothing like Lex's relationship to his father.

“He would never approve of, well, any of this,” Lex offers.  “I couldn't dream of transitioning until after his death.”

And if he caused it?

Well, everyone who could out him about it is _also_ dead.  It was all very clean, very _tidy_ , and he'd paid his price in blood and broken bones.

“Then...why keep any of it?” Clark is frowning.

“Spite, mostly.”

This is what he is — or as close to him as he will allow Superman to come.  He wonders how the man will respond.

Something shifts in Clark's expression, and he reaches out and cups Lex's cheek with his hand.  “Then, well...may I kiss you? For spite's sake?”

That's all Lex needs; he curls his fist in Clark's shirt and pulls him down, kissing _him_ instead.

It's sloppy, but it doesn't have to be clean.

After all, nothing can really _be_ clean in this room.  Under the rug they're standing on, there's a bloodstain that no maid has ever been able to ever get rid of.

The monster is still visible, if you know where to look.

Clark pulls him close and nips gently at Lex's lower lip; the sensation makes Lex shudder with want and open his mouth to an invader's tongue.  In return, tugs at Clark's hair, eliciting a groan from him.

When, moments later, Lex pulls back to breathe, his lower lip is tender and Clark's hair is mussed.

Oh, how his father would have _loathed_ this!

Clark grins at him, and _oh_ , that's _mischief_ in his face.  Lex hadn't planned for that, but something in him responds to it.  He gets u on tiptoe and bites at Clark's jaw.

“Don't leave me a — people will _see_ ,” Clark says, and oh, he's _good_ at this.

Lex could almost believe the reason, but he heeds the request even though he doesn't believe it, even though he knows better.  He can play the game.

He pulls back a little, walking himself backwards toward his father's desk.  Clark moves with him, and soon, Lex is sitting with Clark between his legs, and they're kissing again, long and deep.  Lex can't help himself: he wraps a leg around Clark and tries to drag him closer.

“Lex,” Clark breathes.  “What — what do you want?”

“You.” _You dead, you destroyed, you inside me, take your pick, I want it all._ Lex bites Clark's lower lip and rolls his hips against Clark's.

“Okay,” Clark says, nodding, and bends Lex backwards over the desk, pinning him there.  “How do you want me?”

Lex can't help the moan that escapes him.  “Fuck me, Clark, that's what I want.”

At the very least, that's what will do for now.  Until he has all the other pieces in pace, “Clark Kent” fucking him will do nicely.

“Shit,” Clark breathes.  “Okay — but, like, how do you want it?”

“From behind, in my pussy.”  If he's getting short and snippy, well, he's getting wet and it's been a while since he let somebody fuck him.  His patience is wearing a little thin.

Clark moans and kisses him, his hand squeezing Lex's hip almost tight enough to bruise.  “I can do that.”

He pulls back, dragging Lex with him, and there's a fire in his eyes like embers in the fireplace.  Lex wants to shudder at it, and he's not sure if that shudder would be fear or desire.

Clark's hands slide up underneath Lex's sweater as they kiss again, Lex's arms around Clark's neck, and those hands almost burn, this situation has him so sensitive.  He nips at Clark's lower lip. “Do you want me to strip?”

He manages to make it sound sexy, at least.

“Yeah,” Clark replies with a nod.  “What about me?”

“Stay dressed.” The idea of being naked while Clark, fully dressed, fucks him _here_ to help him spite his father...it's hotter than any fantasy he's ever had.

He never would have dreamed this up himself, and it sets him on fire to know that the Superman is at least capable of _this_ , of mischief and spite and, apparently, honest, simple desire.

Lex has always enjoyed being _wanted._

“Alright,” Clark says, his voice low and a little roughened.  “Let’s get these clothes off you, huh?”

“Yes,” Lex breathes, nearly hissing it, and yanks his sweater off over his head.

Clark’s hands find the hem of his binder, fingers teasing the edge and making Lex gasp in pleasure.  He’s never been as sensitive, not there, and he doesn’t know how Clark is _doing_ it.  

“Can I take this off of you?” he asks, and his voice is almost gentle.  

It sounds as though he’s really _asking._ Like Lex could say “no” and Clark would stop touching him there at all.  Lex...frankly, Lex doesn’t know what to do with that.

“Don’t,” he winds up saying, because it’s what he really wants, and he’s too out of it to lie, for once.

Which is, in its way, utterly horrifying.

Clark nods, kissing him again, thumbs passing one more time along the hem of the binder.  “That’s fine.”

One hand slides down Lex’s stomach to the the buckle of his belt.  Lex gasps again, because Clark’s palm on his bare skin is hot and much more intimate than he had been anticipating.  Clark doesn’t stop, but just presses a kiss to the side of Lex’s neck.

It doesn’t take Clark long to get his hand inside Lex’s pants.  He chuckles, just a little. “Lace underwear?”

“Lace and satin,” Lex says, flushing.  “Custom tailored.”

“I like them,” Clark says, and Christ, Lex had not expected this level of _confidence_ from the man; it’s throwing off all his expectations.

Clark slips his hands into the briefs as he licks a hit stripe up Lex’s neck.  It doesn’t take long for him to find Lex’s stiff clit, but he’s _teasing_ about it, his touch painfully light.

And not, seemingly, out of fear over breaking the lie.  

It’s becoming very clear that Clark is incredibly in control of his own body, and it must be from nearly a lifetime of tucking his strength away.  And this, this teasing touch is _teasing,_ not overdone restraint.

Lex moans, his hips hitching into Clark’s hand.

“Do you want to come before I fuck you?” Clark asks, his voice low and hot in Lex’s ear.  “I think I’d like to see you do that.”

He can barely breathe, and nods; at this rate, he won't have a choice _but_ to come.  Clark is _good_ at this, in a way he had never even imagined, much less expected, and Lex is, like it or not, _at his mercy_.

Clark's fingers slide lower, one slipping between Lex's slick folds, but Lex is trapped more by the intensity of the way Clark is catching his eyes and holding them with his own.  They're so _blue_ , but for now, it's the blue of a welder's torch flame, not the sky or the sea.  Unspeakable in their heat, and Lex cannot look away.

Then, Clark's fingertip slips inside him, just a tiny bit, and the spell of his eyes is broken as Lex screws his eyes shut and whimpers with desire.

Clark's free hand tightens on Lex's waist.  “Is this alright?” he asks, voice suddenly guarded.

Lex cracks an eye open to look at him.  “If you don't keep going I will _never_ forgive you.”

He means it, too.

Clark grins at him and kisses him again while slowly pressing his finger inside Lex up to the knuckle.

It is _divine_.

Obviously, it's been far too long since Lex got laid.  That's the only logical reason he could be feeling and reacting this way, why his voice _cracks_ on a moan when Clark starts moving his finger inside him.

Clark peppers kisses up and down his neck as Lex can't help but spread his legs wider and cling to him more fervently.  Between Clark's movements and Lex's, it should have come as no surprise that Lex's pants would tear, the crotch giving out completely just as Clark starts pressing a second finger into Lex.

“Shit, I'm sorry,” Clark breathes.  

“ _Fuck_ ,” Lex replies, because, of course, brevity is the soul of wit.

Clark presses both fingers deeper.  “Is this okay?” he asks, conscientious as ever, and yes, Lex _has_ to either kill him or marry him, there are _no_ other choices.

“Fuck me, Clark,” Lex orders.  

Clark quirks an eyebrow and a smile at him and crooks his fingers before continuing, clearly searching out Lex's g-spot as he rubs at Lex's inner walls.  

When Lex comes, his eyes roll back in his head and he is overcome with a silent, full-body shudder.

His cunt pulses around Clark's fingers, and _shit_ , this might be the best sex he's ever had.

Of course he has to fuck an _alien_ to finally have good sex.

Of fucking course.

Clark lays him down on the desk as he starts to come down from the high.  Another kiss, and he's pulling his fingers free; Lex fucking _whimpers_ at the empty feeling they leave behind.

“Are you sure you still want it from behind?” Clark asks him.  “You look a little tired.”

Lex is utterly _spent_ , but that's just a challenge, and he narrows his eyes looking up at Clark.  “Flip me over and fuck me, Clark. I can take it.”

“Okay,” Clark says, and obeys, turning Lex over on the desk.  

Lex's toes find the floor, just barely, and he pushes his ass up invitingly.  He might be tired from a shattering orgasm, but he still wants to get _fucked_ , damnit.

Clark laughs, just a little, but there is not an iota of mockery in it, so far as Lex can discern.

If he was making fun of him, that would make the situation so much easier, but no.  No, Clark just seems happy to have him like this, seemingly so enthusiastic.

Not that Lex _isn’t_ — he does want very badly to have Clark’s cock inside him tonight — but Lex’s motives are not at all what Clark likely expects from him.  If Clark knew what Lex was, Lex thinks, glancing up at the painting on the wall, he would never _think_ about touching him, much less doing this.

Lex nearly starts when one of Clark’s hands lands on his hip, but he holds himself still.  Soon, the blunt head of Clark’s cock is nudging at his entrance, his underwear pulled aside, and Lex is wound tight as a violin string, and just as ready to snap.

He isn’t naked, but he’s much _more_ naked than Clark, who leans over his back as he slowly begins to press inside him, and the contrast — his skin against Clark’s shirt and slacks — makes Lex even hotter for him, his fingers curling against the fine wood of his father’s executive desk.

Clark fully sheathes himself inside Lex, and Lex is intensely aware of every inch of his cock in a way he's never been with any other man.  Clark is well-hung, but it's not _just_ that; he moves with unusual grace as well.

Damn him, he's _good_ at this.

He leans down and kisses the back of Lex's neck, brushing his hair aside.  “Ready?” he asks, his voice soft.

“Get on with it already,” Lex hisses, “ _Fuck_ me.”

Clark laughs, nipping where he kissed.  Then he starts to move, rolling his hips slowly, and Lex is swept away like a tide pool.

He feels so very full, and the friction against his inner walls is exquisite; he hitches his hips backward, seeking out more of this feeling, this overwhelming sensory experience.  It’s not what he expected, but he chases it when offered anyway.

“Please,” he breathes, unable to express what he’s asking for, not even sure what it might be.  He just _wants_.

Clark leans down and kisses the back of his shoulder again, his hips steady as they pound into Lex.

Lex looks up at the painting again, to distract himself more than anything else.  He doesn't want to come again so quickly. _God_ , he's getting fucked by a man — by _Superman —_ in his father's study, for spite's sake.

His father must be rolling in his grave.  The man would despise every part of this — his daughter, stealing his name and his office, getting fucked by a man _in his study_.

Fuck, that shouldn't turn him on like it does.  He lets out a strained whimper, his body already lit up, his pleasure violin-string taut.

“God, Lex,” Clark rasps.  “You're so _tight_ , are you sure you're —”

“I'm fine,” Lex replies, snapping his hips back against Clark's, and for some reason, his voice is shaking.

Clark moans, curling his arm around Lex's waist, hauling him close against Clark's broad chest, and Lex can feel the tension in his body as Clark actually seems to shudder above him.

Lex is going to die, he's in so much pleasure.  Nothing can stop him, now — his father's ghost could literally appear in the room and he wouldn't be able to stop himself from enjoying the feeling of Clark wrapped around him, driving into him like this is what they were both made for.

Both, ha, _put on this planet_ for.

“I’m not gonna last much longer,” Clark breathes hotly into his ear.  “What about you?”

Lex moans.  “Come inside me, and you’ll find out.”

He hasn’t had a period in nearly a decade now, and Superman’s another species anyway.  Pregnancy is _not_ a factor here.

Even if, for just an instant, the idea gets him a little hotter.

Clark groans.  “ _God,_ Lex, you sure?”  

“Yes,” Lex says, nodding.  “Come in me, I want to feel you do it.”

That seems to be what sets Clark off; he slams his hips into Lex, groaning Lex’s name, driving his cock all the way inside him, and gripping his hip hard enough to bruise as he finishes.  Come coats the inside of Lex’s cunt, hot and liquid, and he can _feel_ the head of Clark’s cock against his cervix —

And that pushes _him_ over the edge in turn, silently, wracked by a full body shudder as his insides pulse around Clark’s cock, drawing out both of their climaxes even further.

Eventually, though, Lex sags against the desk, cheek pressed against the leather inlay in the wood as he slips from his position leaning on his elbows.  He’s hot and wet, yet utterly sated, and all he wants is to just stay like this for a while, Clark still inside him.

Clark leans over him, reaching for and covering one of his hands with his own, lacing their fingers together.

The intimacy puts a knot in Lex’s throat.  It’s one thing to get fucked by a man, but quite another to have him hold his hand unprompted, as of this was a natural course of events.

As if they weren’t both lying throughout every single second of the encounter.

Tears, suddenly, sting at the corners of Lex’s eyes, and the cotton of Clark’s button down is impossibly scratchy against the bare skin of his lower back, and everything is too intense and too _much_ and it was always true, he _is_ a whore and always will be, no matter how far he distances himself from his girlhood.

The sob that tears its way loose from his throat is humiliating in and of itself.

Clark’s reaction is immediate.  His other hand lands soothingly at the dip of Lex’s waist, a point of contact that somehow doesn’t hurt like the sensation of cloth on his skin does.  “Lex? What’s wrong?”

He’s not even pretending, because you can’t fake that kind of bewilderment.

“I’m fine,” Lex half-gasps.  “I’m fine, don’t concern yourself.”

He isn’t fine.  He’s never been fine, and he never will be, not when it comes to something like this.

“I should pull out,” Clark says, but pauses, seemingly giving space for Lex to object or confirm that course of action, another thing that sets Clark apart.  Other men, faced with this, would get as far away from a Lex Luthor in tears as they could.

“I’m fine,” Lex repeats, “But — yes, yes, maybe you should.”

Clark does, slowly, his hands gentle on Lex’s hips.  The empty feeling Lex feels in his wake is only partially literal.

Clark’s hand lands on the small of his back, now.  “Do you — do you want me to stick around?” He sounds worried, and Lex can’t bear to look at him.  It’s all too much, and he doesn’t know what to do about any of it.

“I’m sure you have more important things…”  Lex forces himself to stand up, fingertips quivering as they dig into the edge of the desk.  “I wouldn’t want to keep you from them.”

“My schedule’s clear,” Clark rebuts gently.  “Do you need anything?”

Lex shakes his head.  He leans down to try and get his sweater off the floor.  “I’m fine, I swear. I don’t know what came over me just then — the sex was great, it wasn’t anything _you_ did, I promise you that.”

He’s rambling again.  Just like he did at the fucking party.  

Clark catches his hands and picks up the sweater himself.  “Would it be a terrible imposition if I stuck around to make sure you’re okay?”

Oh, he’s _good_ , a part of Lex thinks distantly.  A skilled manipulator. In any other context, Lex would be impressed.

Instead, Lex just feels weak.

He takes the sweater from Clark.  “I’m not some consumptive nineteenth century virgin, Clark,” he mutters, pulling the sweater on again.  He doesn’t go looking for his pants.

“That’s true,” Clark agrees.  “But still. Humor me?”

Clark wants to stay.  Clark will only go if Lex insists upon him leaving.  The combination of those two facts should mean something, but Lex is swinging low very quickly; he can’t string the two thoughts together in a way that means anything at all.

He exhales.  “Okay, fine. I — my bedroom is, this way.”

He leads Clark out of the study, barely looking over his shoulder to make sure he follows.  He really does need sleep, it seems.

In the far corner of the room, two mugs of hot coffee sit unnoticed and untouched.

 

* * *

Clark reaches out and gently touches Lex’s cheek when they pause at Lex’s bedroom door.  Only Lex’s exhaustion allows that to happen.

“Are you okay?  Do you want me to go?”

“Do you want to stay or not?” Lex asks, flat, suddenly hostile.  “You keep second-guessing, as if I don’t know what I want.”

Clark pauses, his hand falling.  “...Oh.”

He steps closer, his hands landing on Lex’s hips again.  “I’m sorry,” he apologizes. “It’s hard to tell what you’re feeling, you’re so closed-off.  I don’t want to accidentally do something to make things worse.”

Too late for that.

“Apology accepted,” Lex says, because that's the thing you _say_ when someone apologizes, not because it's true.  “Like I said, you can stay the night with me.”

Clark nods, still seeming a little unsettled.  “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” Lex says, before he even thinks it through.  Apparently his body wants Clark much more simply than his brain does, because his body is a _fucking_ idiot.

Clark leans in and kisses him, slowly, carefully, as if he’s afraid that Lex might shatter in his arms.  It makes part of Lex absolutely nauseated, but the rest of him seems intent on running the show, because he leans into it, doing far more than just permitting it as his hand curls in Clark’s shirt.

Then, Clark pulls back.  “Do you want to go to bed?”

“That was the goal,” Lex points out dryly.  “Despite distractions.”

Clark smiles at him.  “Then let’s.” He puts an arm around Lex’s waist and pushes open the door, walking them both through the doorway.

Lex tries not to take his work home to this mansion, though the penthouse doesn’t get that same consideration, and so his room is devoid of motors and scalpels and even computers, barring the household control panel on the wall by the door.  

There’s just his king sized bed, draped in silks, in velvets, and in fleece.  The bed is a dark purple, and it looks incredibly inviting tonight, moreso, even, than usual.

“Wow,” Clark murmurs.  “That’s a nice bed.”

Maybe it’s the intensity of what has just happened, but Lex can’t help the laugh that bubbles up.  “Understatement of the year, just you wait.” He, a little out of his own head, takes Clark by the hand and leads him to the bed.  “Now strip, there’s a no-clothes rule in my bed.”

There wasn’t, but there is now.

Clark smiles at him, in a way that seems to imply that he thinks Lex is feeling better.  

And, well, Lex _is,_ but in a distant sort of way, and that happens sometimes — his whole life, if a feeling is too intense, it will just...distance itself from him.  He still feels it, he thinks, but it’s sort of muffled.

They both undress, and Lex pauses, slamming back into himself as he remembers he can’t sleep in his binder.

No one has seen him unbound, besides his doctor, since he began his transition.

 _Fuck._ And Clark has clearly done his homework.  He’d know, wouldn’t he, that Lex shouldn’t sleep in his binder, so just going to bed with it on won’t go uncommented.

He takes a breath, his fingertips in hem of the garment.

“I won’t look,” Clark says, from somewhere behind him,  “If you want, I can wait until you get under the covers.”

Why is he _like_ this?  What is the secret, where is the poor weld he can crack and find the monster underneath?  

“Oh, okay,” Lex says, a little bit on autopilot, and takes the binder off.  His tits ache, and he rubs at them just for a moment or two, before he slides under the covers and wraps himself up tightly in one of his blankets.  “Uh, ready.”

Clark moves toward him, and Lex can’t help but look at him, take him in.  He’s shaped, well, shaped like Superman, but it’s different, somehow, like this, his body bare before Lex’s eyes.  He looks...not vulnerable, but...unarmored. Beauty without the _stone_ underneath that Superman has.

Shit.  This might have been a horrible idea.

Still, he’s made his bed, and now, Superman is going to lie in it.

Clark lays down beside him, reaching for the lamp as he does.  Lex keeps watching him, until the light goes out, and is surprised, somehow, when Clark’s fingers trail across his cheek.  

He doesn’t say anything, and neither does Lex, and if Lex feels an ache in his chest at the touch, well…

Nobody has to know.

 

* * *

 

Lex wakes the next morning with Superman’s arm wrapped around his waist, pulled against the larger man’s massive chest.

His first instinct, somehow, is to burrow closer.

 _This is all a lie_ , he reminds himself.  Clark might genuinely enjoy him, but the man is fundamentally a fraud.  

And Lex, in turn?  Lex has a purpose beneath this whole affair; he _will_ destroy the man in his bed, and that makes whatever he does here only an act to keep the con going long enough to succeed.

He should be offended at the very _idea_ that he would genuinely want any of this.

He's _allowed_ it, he tries to tell himself.

Nothing more.

Clark begins to stir behind him, his fingers spreading on Lex's stomach, and Lex's body can't _help_ but react.  In seconds, he's stiff, and then he's wet as well.

Well, when in Rome, he decides, and turns over in Clark's arms.

“Good morning,” he whispers, pressing himself against Clark.  In the space of an instant, he decides it:

Clark's going to die, anyway.  Allowing him to see Lex naked won't mean much of anything in the long run, so there's no point in hiding the reality of his body, anyway.

“Lex?” Clark mumbles, blinking at him in confusion for a moment as he wakes up.

It's...strangely honest.  One of those things you just can't fake.

Lex nods.  “Yes.”

“Wow,” Clark murmurs.  “Are you — did you sleep okay?”

He hasn't even thought about that, about the fact that, now that he does think about it, he'd slept perfectly.  No nightmares, no tension in his neck or jaw, nothing.

He feels, beside everything else, _rested._

“Yes, I'm fine,” he says, nodding.  “And you?”

“This is a really nice bed,” Clark says with a smile.  “Thanks for letting me stick around.”

Lex lets out a little laugh and pushes at Clark's shoulder.  “You asked, and I couldn't think of a good reason to say no.” He shrugs one shoulder.  “Lay back.”

Clark rolls over, just a little, raising an eyebrow at him.

Lex pushes himself up enough that he can straddle Clark.  “Think you might be in the mood for another round?”

Clark flushes, his eyes catching on Lex's chest just for a second before returning to his face.  “I — yes, I could definitely —”

“Good, because I want to ride you.”

Clark laughs, just a tiny bit, his hands finding Lex's hips.  His hand finds a bruise from the night before, and when Lex winces, he slides his hand down to Lex's thigh.  “Sounds good to me,” he says, smiling up at him.

Lex smiles back, gut slightly unsettled by how sweet Clark looks, spread out on his bed.

After that, it's not long until he slides down onto Clark's cock, and that, at least, can put everything else out of his mind for a while.

 

* * *

 

Lex is not, technically speaking, a biologist.

That is to say, any biology he knows is very, very self-taught.  Considering the various pies LexCorp has stuck its fingers in over the years, Lex has picked up plenty.

So, when he finally gets his hands on the corpse of the alien called Zod for more than five minutes, it might technically be a bad idea to conduct this ‘autopsy’ himself.  He’d never so much as considered getting a doctorate in any of the biological or medical sciences, after all.

But he _wants_ to be the one to do this, and so, he’s the one that does it.

He doesn’t mind the decontamination blow-dryer, and he brings just the small piece of Kryptonite — it’s all he’s going to need.

Zod is already laid out for him on a slab, his corpse seemingly defying two years of decomposition without even so much as a hint of ice on him.  Fascinating.

Lex gets the small piece of Kryptonite affixed to a scalpel with a little bit of ingenuity, and does the first thing he knows he needs to: he starts, very carefully, shaving off the fingerprints on Zod’s right hand.

Zod had control over the ship currently resting in the middle of Metropolis, the ship merely doors away from this laboratory.  It seems obvious that the ship’s security will only allow _him_ to access its computers.

And Lex _wants_ those computers.  They’ll be able to give him more than a single corpse ever could, in a format he has far more experience with.

Still, once the prints are obtained, he still takes the time to examine the body.

Superman had snapped Zod’s neck to save the lives of a family trapped in the same building that Superman and Zod’s fight ended in.  That much is widespread knowledge, given that the family _talked_ about it.

Lex’s fingers trace Zod’s neck where the bones shift.  Superman did that, and it is Superman’s hands that Lex has so recently been at the mercy of.

Strange, how gentle those hands could be, in service to the lie.

He pulls his own hand back as if burned.  He reminds himself: _This is what he can do to you._ Worse, even, as human physiology is _tissue paper_ in comparison to the known examples of Kryptonian physiology.

Enjoying a liar’s lies doesn’t mean he can let his guard down.

As he puts the Kryptonite scalpel away, he tries to ignore his own trembling hands.

 

* * *

 

The Metropolis Museum of Science and Natural History is holding a charity cocktail event, and, of course, Lex has been invited.  It’s not unusual for that to be the case — he’s one of the Museum’s most regular donors — but what is unusual is that, when he receives the invitation, this happens:

“Mercy?” he calls, seated at his desk for once as he goes through the few pieces of snail mail he receives.  “Cut the check for the Science Museum’s cocktail party, it’s fifteen thousand a head, so make it forty-five.”

It’s only when she gives him a weird look that he realizes what he said.

“Will you be inviting Mister Kent, Mister Luthor?” She asks, very blasé, schooling her face back into her usual flat expression.

“Uh, yeah.”  He pretends he meant it, that it wasn’t just something that came out of his mouth out of nowhere.  He exhales. “I’ll text him bout it, you just cut the check and get yourself a nice dress or something on one of my cards.”

Mercy nods.  “Of course, Mister Luthor.”  She twitches a little smile. “Should I put in a tux order for Mister Kent, as well?”

He rolls his eyes at her.  “No. He’d probably be weirded out by that.”

She nods again, and leaves the room without another word.

Once she’s gone, he puts his head down on his desk, groaning quietly.  How has it come to this? How is it so easy, so _assumed_ , that Clark will be on his arm at something like this?

He has things he still intends to do.  He shouldn’t have let Clark in so close.

But this is how things are now, these moments when he forgets himself and genuinely _likes_ the front that is Clark Kent, even if it is all a lie.

He sighs and sits up.  With luck, soon he’ll crack that facade and reveal the monster.

If only he just could figure out _how._

In the meantime, though, he has this to deal with, and so he pulls his phone out of his pocket.   _Hey there’s a thing at the science museum, do you wanna go?_

He doesn’t have to wait very long before he gets a response:

_Is it formal?  When is it?_

_Next week, and yeah, it’s formal, but that grey suit you wore to my thing would be fine.  Plus, I *really* like how that looks on you._

It’s true, and one of those flirtatious things he’s allowed to say, right?

A moment or two of pause, and then: _When next week?_

_Friday night.  I can pick you up at work, or you can come by the tower?_

_I’ll come to you.  What time?_

_Six thirty_

_Sounds good =)_

Lex can’t help the smile that crosses his face, and, in the moment, he doesn’t even really want to.

 

* * *

 

Clark arrives, of course, right on time.

He’s wearing the suit, and Lex can’t physically help how attracted he is to Clark in his moment.  It’s a purely physical lust, it has to be, given everything else.

But the fact is, he can’t help it, or the the shiver that runs up his spine when Clark smiles at him from the doorway into Lex’s office.  “Hey, Lex.”

His voice is warm, and they haven’t seen each other in more than a week, and Lex can’t help it: he _feels_ something.

“Hi,” he says, twitching out a little smile.  “I see you took my advice.”

“You said you liked it, so I thought I’d wear it.”  He approaches Lex’s desk, and Lex stands, dressed in black suit and green shirt.

Lex smirks, just a little.  “I appreciate that.”

Clark smirks a little, too.  Then, to Lex’s surprise, he leans down and kisses Lex’s mouth, an arm sliding around his waist.  “Thank you,” he murmurs against Lex’s lips before pulling away only far enough to see him clearly.

It’s more forward than Lex expects, somehow, even given everything that’s happened between them.  

“Now, shall we?” he asks.  “Mercy will be joining us; I always bring her to things like this.”

Clark nods.  “Will she be working?”

“To some degree.”  Lex shrugs one shoulder, his fingertips skating Clark’s wrist as he moves out of his space, toward the door.  “At things like this, she normally just keeps an eye out for useful information.”

“So she’s working, but it’s more glamorous than normal?”

Lex laughs.  “That’s essentially what it is,” he admits.  “I pay her overtime, of course.”

“As you should,” Clark says, clearly teasing.

As they leave, Lex can’t help but think it’s things like this that make it so hard to discern the lines knows he shouldn’t, or can’t, cross.

 

* * *

 

“I figured I would see you here.”

Lex is in the middle of an animated explanation of the way black holes theoretically spaghettify matter and light when he’s interrupted by, of all people, Bruce Wayne.

He turns and looks the man up and down.  “Two visits in a year,” he comments. “One might think you actually _like_ us.”

Clark’s arm is around his waist, and Lex wonders what Bruce must think of that, if he suspects yet what Clark is, or that Superman has a mortal guise at all.  It was an obvious leap to make, for him, but no one else seems to have connected the dots except Lois Lane.

“Your secretary won’t take my calls,” Bruce says.  “And the Wayne Foundation donates in Metropolis, you know that.”

Yes, he does.  Gotham and Metropolis, sister cities just south of New York, straddling the Delaware River.  Of course a charity in one would donate in the other.

How had he not anticipated this?

“That’s odd,” he replies.  “I’ll have to talk to Mercy about it.  What do you need?”

Bruce considers their company for a moment.  Smart move. “Well, I’m interested in taking a look at your R&D, if that offer’s still on the table.”

Clark’s hand tightens on his waist, obviously unconsciously.  Fear?

Why would Clark _fear_ Bruce?  Bruce doesn’t have the Kryptonite, and he won’t get it.  If Clark even knows he has Kryptonite, for that matter.

“Now’s not really a good time,” Lex says.  “There’s been an upswing in the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been extremely busy.  Barely even able to pull together enough time to see Clark, sorry.”

He curls his fingers in the edge of Clark’s suit jacket, worrying at the hem.

Two weeks ago, and he might’ve jumped at this chance to have Bruce alone, but now, his only thought is _if I let him in my home, he’ll steal and destroy everything that matters._

In the moment, he doesn’t realize what that means.

Bruce gives him a fake, understanding smile.  “I understand. When things cool off a little, though, give me a call.”

As Bruce drifts back into the crowd, Lex is overcome with the urge to get Clark alone, to have him all to himself in an environment _he_ controls.  They can’t leave yet, but…

“Do you wanna see the Planetarium?  I can sneak us in.”

Clark frowns down at him.  “What’s in there? And why would we need to sneak in?”

“It’s not operating right now, but I know how to work the computers.”  He shrugs. “I want to finish that explanation. and there’s a black hole visual sim in there.”

It’s total bullshit, though the simulation is a real thing the Planetarium has.

Clark nods, gives him a little smile.  “Yes. I’d like that.”

So, Lex takes his hand, and leads Clark out of the Geology exhibit.

 

* * *

 

He can't stop thinking about the conversation with Bruce Wayne.  

He gets some respite, yes, losing himself in sex with Clark once they get back from the party, but that can only last so long, and afterward, when Clark is asleep beside him, all of the memories of the conversation come flooding back to the front of his mind.

Including the fear he felt at the idea that Bruce might actually _get_ the Kryptonite.

Lex feels his chest tightening with the echo of it, and hates himself for it, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom.

He’s afraid _for_ Superman.  Not merely _of_ him.

It’s so _hard_ , in the end, to not care about the self that Clark puts out.  Unflaggingly kind, unspeakably gentle. Just tonight, he’d treated Lex like there was an honest romance going on —

But there isn’t.  There _can’t_ be.

Lex swallows, and gets out of bed.  He pads to his closet to get dressed again, but as soon as the door is closed, he feels tears stinging at the corners of his eyes.  He buries his face in his hands.

How _dare_ Superman do this to him — make him _want_ like this?

Miserably, he dresses.  As though on autopilot, he walks to his bedroom door.  He looks back over his shoulder, taking in Clark, in his bed, sprawled, looking so inviting even in sleep.

He could go back to bed, strip out of his clothes again, curl up against Clark and pretend until morning.  Part of him wants to.

But he can’t.  He can’t do this, his guts raw and aching with the force of the lies, and he leaves the room, closing the door as quietly as he can.

He heads downstairs, all the way downstairs, from the penthouse to the basement lab where the Kryptonite is hidden.  The one thing that could hurt Superman, and Lex has it. Lex can do as he pleases with it.

If he wanted to, he could take it back upstairs and kill Clark where he sleeps.

But he won’t, and he knows he won’t, and he shudders out a sigh in the empty elevator.  How has he come to this? How has he _let_ himself?

In the basement, he shrugs on his lab coat and plugs in the security code for the lab itself.  He proceeds inside almost as if in a dreaming state, and uses the retinal scanner and fingerprint scanner to unlock the safe containing the Kryptonite.

Time to study it.  Time to see if it can be neutralized.

Maybe if he does this one thing, he can call that honesty enough.

 

* * *

 

The thing is, when Lex Luthor fucks up, he fucks up _heavy._

He’s not expecting the reaction between the Kryptonite and the sulfur-based compound he’s working with to be so explosive, to send him flying into the glass of the lab door, to set his head aflame quite literally, to make a noise so loud it deafens him temporarily.

He can’t move as fire fills the basement.  He manages, he thinks, to put out the flames on the side of his head, but he can’t move, can’t escape.

If he dies here, he dies alone.

He almost expects to, because wouldn’t that be the finest of ironies — dying while trying to find a way to nullify Kryptonite, the one thing that can do Superman harm?

But then, suddenly, he _isn’t_ alone.  A familiar silhouette, hazy with the blunt force trauma, the colors unclear in the licking flames, and he’s suddenly being picked up, curled against a broad chest, and it’s _Superman_ , of course it is, it could never be anyone else, and Lex could _laugh_ if he had air enough to take a breath.

Superman rises out of a hole in the ground, Lex’s hands tangled in the ‘S’ like it means something.  

EMTs are already here, the lights flashing, and Superman deposits him on a stretcher for them, but Lex doesn’t let go.  “Wait,” he breathes, shakily.

Superman pauses, his face falling a little, into an expression Lex can recognize as being one of Clark’s.

“Upstairs, penthouse,” he mumbles, in service to the lie.  Then, he lets go and lets darkness take him.

He doesn’t see the way Superman relaxes slightly, just a little.

It’s probably good that he doesn’t, to be frank.

 

* * *

 

 _Superman saved me_.  

It’s the only thought he can muster, concussed as he is, sitting in an examination room, a nurse examining the burns on his head.  Just the right side, it seems, but it _hurts_ when she touches them.

 _Superman saved me._  Against all odds, the one thing Lex had never expected has come to to pass, the accident to end all accidents.

Superman saved him, and now he has to live with that.  

How can he live with that?

The thoughts are hazy, and he doesn’t hear the doctor or the nurse when they talk to him.  Mercy’s here, she’s listening, it’s not a big deal. The doctors put a bandage along the burned part of his head, adhering it with skin glue.

He can’t think, can’t process anything, anything but the pain of knowing that Superman saved him, and looked at him like _that_.

Mercy shuffles him out of the room, and he’s going to have to give her a raise.

In the waiting room, though, Clark is there, and it’s as though all the breath is suddenly sucked straight out of Lex’s lungs.

Clark is here.  Clark waited for him.  Clark _came_ for him.

Just like Superman had.

“Lex?” Clark asks, and he sounds — relieved? — to see him.  He steps toward him, looking between Lex and Mercy as though he’s expecting someone to stop him.

Nobody does.  

Clark’s hands land on Lex’s shoulders.  “I woke up, and you were gone, and the building was rattling.”  Carefully, always so careful, Lex is wrapped up in his arms. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

Mercy speaks, then.  “Mister Luthor has a concussion; he hasn’t really been very verbal since I got here.”

Clark nods, and Lex’s hands suddenly curl in the front of Clark’s shirt, and he’s crying, his face pressed against Clark’s chest, right where the emblem would be, if this was Superman.

But it is, isn’t it?

That’s the worst part.

Clark’s arms tighten around him.  “Lex? Do you want me to stay with you?”

“Please,” Lex rasps, hands fisted, now, in Clark’s shirt.

“Okay, it’s okay,” Clark murmurs, and slowly, the three of them leave the hospital.  Lex barely notices, too wrapped up in Clark to care very much. Clark is here, Clark _wants_ to be here, and Lex knows nothing but that.

 

* * *

 

They don’t go back to the tower.  Lex isn’t sure what that means, still somewhat dazed from everything that’s happened, but he just leans against Clark’s shoulder as Mercy pulls up to the door of Lex’s mansion, Clark’s arm around him.

“How are you feeling?” Clark murmurs to hm, as Mercy puts the car in park.

Lex blinks a little.  “I...I don’t know.”

Clark nods, and tugs Lex out of the car when Mercy opens the door for them.  He smiles at her, thanking her, and she nods, slipping back into the car.

When she pulls away, that leaves them alone on Lex’s doorstep.

“Do you, um, can you unlock the door?” Clark asks, gently.

Lex nods.  He’s coherent enough for that, at least.  He steps forward, away from Clark, and prods the keypad until the door unlocks.

Clark guides him inside, and Lex feels distant from everything.  The world around them feels...muffled, somehow, as though his head is entirely wrapped in cotton, not just bandaged one one side.

They go upstairs, and the silence is both baffling and insurmountable.  Lex doesn’t know what he _can_ say, even.

“You should probably wash up a little,” Clark suggests as they reach Lex’s bedroom.  “There’s...a lot of soot.”

Lex nods, still silent, and heads for the bathroom.

The mirror sharpens everything back into focus: the right side of his head is bandaged, what hair around the bandages is still left is left brittle and singed, and his clothes are covered in soot.  He’s bruised along his left arm, and he looks…

He looks _damaged._  Out of control.   _Weak._

He remembers, like a flashbulb, the night his father died.  How the car had crashed, how his father’s neck had snapped, how he himself had been broken-boned but triumphant in the aftermath, the rain soaking into his skin.

The mirror in the hospital bathroom that night had been just as cruel, showing him what the world saw: a half-pretty teenaged girl with six broken bones and a black eye, as if, in his moment of escape and revenge, he merely finally _looked_ the part of the battered daughter he had always been.

 _Lexi_ Luthor died that night, but _Lex Luthor,_ _Jr._  still had to pick up the pieces of his life.

Now, the feeling returns.  But worse, since the mirror shows him not a lick of farce or falsehood, this time.  Just a thirty-three-year-old man, staring at himself in the mirror and hating the weakness he sees.

The hair is the worst part, he decides, pulling the shirt off of his body to consider the other bruising he feels.  Yes, the hair. He doesn’t want to look like this, doesn’t want to look like something has _happened_ to him.  

There’s an electric razor on the sink; he takes it, measures out where the shave would need to be.

He’s too vain to shave it all off, just like he’d been too vain to cut it all off when he transitioned a decade ago.  He _likes_ his hair, the ginger wave of its fall.  

But his left arm won’t let him do this himself, damn those bruises.

His hands are shaking, but he takes the razor and a pair of nail clipping scissors back to the bedroom.  Clark is sitting on the bed, looking at him with worry in his eyes.

Lex pushes the clipping scissors and the razor at him, then re-parts his hair, keeping as much of the hair as he can.  He gestures to what’s left on the other side, falling over the bandaged parts and the singed layer. “Shave this part off, I look like trash.”

Clark blinks at him.  “Are you sure?”

“Yes.  I’m not calling my barber at two a.m., Clark, I don’t want to _see_ anyone but you until at least tomorrow.”

Rambling.  Shit. He needs to restrain himself better.

“...Okay,” Clark says, nodding.  “C’mere.”

Lex approaches him, sitting down on the bed as well, offering Clark the side of his head.

Clark starts with the nail scissors, and hair begins to fall away, and Lex stays very still and tries not to think about anything.  He can’t let his mind run away with him tonight, with Clark doing this for him.

Why is Clark always so gentle?  Why can Lex see Clark in the Superman?

Why is there no difference?

His mind falls down the rabbit hole there, just a little bit.  Clark, the Clark with him right now, is only _superficially_ different from the Superman, and that —

He’s just a _liar._  And Lex _knowing_ that makes Lex a liar, too.

Lex thinks he should hate him for that, but the simple fact of the matter is that here, now, he can’t hate him at all.

Time enough for that in the morning, when his head is back on straight and he surveys the damage done to his lab tonight.  

Clark turns on the electric razor, and the sound in the silence is almost deafening.  Lex sinks into the buzzing as Clark pulls it in short strokes between the part and the bandages, his thoughts slowly sinking, too.

He’s utterly aware of Clark’s hands, one on the razor, one holding Lex’s head steady.  Lex has had these hands all over his body, but this is different; this feels like a different _kind_ of intimacy than that.  Clark knows him carnally, maybe better than any other single individual on earth, but this isn’t about knowing: this is about trust.

Clark, trusting Lex to know what Lex wants.  Lex, trusting Clark with sharp things so close to his throat.

It’s funny.  Until this very moment, Lex hadn’t even _thought_ about that.

But he finds it’s true.  On some instinctive, reflexive level, he doesn’t believe that Clark is going to hurt him.  He feels...he feels _safe_ like this, in his bedroom, Clark shaving part of his head, a bulwark against the world they will find themselves in, in the morning.

God, in the morning.  In the morning, people will want to know things.

In the morning, Lex will have _something_ to say, but not now.

Now, he’s just aching, brought low by the realization that this is real, that, instead of discovering the monster beneath the facade…

There doesn’t appear to be a monster at all.  

No matter how intimate they become.

Clark finishes the shave, and puts the razor on the nightstand, his hand skating Lex’s cheek.  “How do you feel?”

“Better,” Lex breathes, because it’s true, and he climbs into Clark’s lap.  He needs to forget for a little while that this is all happening, that this is real.

He needs to _not think_ , and Clark is very good at distracting him.

Clark’s hand comes to his waist, gently holding his good side.  “Better is good,” he murmurs. “You should probably get some sleep.”

“I don’t want to,” Lex says, leaning his forehead against Clark’s.  “I want you to kiss me.”

“I can do that,” Clark says softly, and does, his lips as gentle as the rest of him as he kisses Lex on the mouth.  “Better?”

Lex nods.  “More?”

Clark kisses him again, pulling him closer, something yearning in the way he’s holding Lex.  For a moment, Lex is shocked he recognizes the yearning, but then he can put the thought out of his mind, his body taking back control as they kiss.

Lex presses himself against Clark, wanting to forget everything else but the feeling of their bodies against each other.  He wants to have this, just for a little while.

“I’m glad you’re going to be okay,” Clark murmurs, when Lex comes up for air.  “You scared me, for a little bit.”

He’s not lying.  Lex knows it.

The knowing puts a lump in his throat, a shiver in his next breath.  “I’m fine. Superman — Superman pulled me out of the basement.”

“Yeah,” Clark says, nodding a little.  “But...waiting for you in the E.R…”

Lex kisses him again, tears stinging in his eyes.  He can’t stand this, can’t stand knowing that he _wants_ this, now.

Everything has changed, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

Clark’s hand finds the uninjured side of his face and holds him.  “Could you...whatever you’re working on down there, could you be more careful, next time?”

Lex nods, and wishes they weren’t lying to each other.

They kiss again, and again, and again, but that ache _never_ goes away.

 

* * *

 

Lex tries to ignore the turn in his research, as he returns to the scout ship three days after the explosion.  

He hasn’t looked at his surveillance systems in at least a week, besides the one tracking Batman.  He has _no_ idea what Diana Prince, Silas Stone, or Barry Allen are up to, and the extent of his monitoring Bruce Wayne has amounted to: _the Kryptonite is safe._

He should be looking.  They are still potential threats.  Batman will _always_ be a potential threat, lurking across the bay, and a threat partly of Lex’s making.

But he bats all those thoughts aside as Mercy accompanies the gurney bearing Zod’s body into the lab Lex has commandeered.  Just a little nudging, a gentle reminder to Senator Finch’s contemporary of what _could_ happen if someone found a way to harm Superman in a significant way, and Lex has even more access than before.

This time, it’s not even a lie.

He pushes that thought away and leans over the body, his hand falling to the broken neck almost unconsciously.

The gentleness of Clark’s touch cuts sharp through his thoughts, the memory of his hand cradling Lex’s head stealing his breath now for a moment.   _He doesn’t want to hurt you, even though he could._

He tries to push the thought away again, tries to focus, and pulls his hand away from Zod’s throat.

Carefully, he begins taking samples with the Kryptonite scalpel, the mineral buzzing a little under his fingers as he does.  More skin, first, from the back of Zod’s thigh. A section of vein — and vial of blood — from the inside of his elbow. Muscle fibers.  A small chip of bone.

He doesn’t know how he could manage a proper semen sample, so he skips it.  If he has to, he’ll find a way to get a living sample surreptitiously from Clark, anyway.

He puts the samples in a cooler.  By now, he’s beginning to run low on his allotted time, and he’ll have to make his next move next time he can come here.

In the meantime, hopefully, he can make some headway with the samples and his scalpel.

And maybe he can stop thinking about Clark.

 

* * *

 

When the flowers arrive in his office, Lex very nearly vomits.

He gets ahold of himself, forcing the bile back down, putting the card back down on his desk and forcing himself to look away.

Clark sent him _flowers._

The arrangement seems carefully considered, too.  Subtle. No roses, as if Clark knows Lex wouldn’t want to see them.  But, instead, stems of lavender, of clover, a scattering of gardenias and green carnations.

It’s beautiful.  

Lex can’t stand it.

All of this, this absurd lie they’re living — Clark clearly wants him, wants what they have, but he still keeps up the lie.

Lavender for devotion.  Clover, the exhortation to _think of me_.  Green carnations, the same flower Lex sent when this all began, a subtle sign of queer intention.  And gardenias.

_Secret love._

It’s barely been three months since this whole farce began.  And Clark claims to love him in secret?

He might as well rip open Lex’s chest and tear out his beating heart.

How dare he?  How _dare_ he claim to love him when this lie stands between them?  And Lex could have fallen for it, too. If he didn’t already know the truth, he would easily have been taken in.

 _This_ is why he hates Superman.  

Because, even if Superman _isn’t_ secretly a monster, it’s because of Superman that Lex is sleeping with a liar.

Still on the verge of being sick, Lex jerks to his feet and slams his arm sideways, the vase falling and shattering on the floor of the office.  The shards of glass glitter amidst the fallen flowers, and he’s struck with the urge to swallow the glass, let it rip him up from the inside.

See if Superman can save him from _that_.

Bitterly, he stalks out of his office.

“Mercy, get me time with the scout ship.”

 

* * *

 

He’s still furious, hours later, standing before the Kryptonian ship, Zod’s fingerprints in a small case in his hand.

This is how he’ll trick the ship into granting him access, grant him ownership, and then, _then_ he can learn these things that frustrate him so deeply.  What harms a Kryptonian? What heals one?

He doesn’t know, and this is the fastest way he has to find out.

After all, he _can’t_ ask his liar of a lover for an answer.

Carefully taking the prints from their case, he presses them to his own fingertips.  Then, he presses his hand to the locking mechanism, and it begins to whir and shift.

It begins to _open_.

Then, footsteps behind him.  He cranes his neck around, because he’s supposed to be alone with this for at _least_ an hour more.

His face breaks into a snarl when he sees that it’s _Superman._

Superman looks at him, a frown crinkling between his eyebrows.  “Mister Luthor? What are you doing?”

“Oh, don’t fucking _Mister Luthor_ me, _Clark_ ,” Lex snaps, turning around to face him fully.  “After all of this, don’t you fucking dare pretend you don’t know me.”

Superman actually _steps back._  “Lex —“

And there’s the bewildered tone to his voice, that’s _all_ Clark Kent.  

“You’ve been lying to me this whole time, and, for the record, I’ve known that all along.”

Clark steps toward him again.  “Lex, I’m sorry, but you have to understand, I couldn’t just _tell_ you.”

“Why not?”

That’s the thing, too.  That’s the question everything about this farce hinges on.   _Why does the liar lie?_

“I — I didn’t know how you’d respond.  You don’t exactly _like_ Superman.  I didn’t want — I didn’t want to ruin this with that.”  He looks away. “And then I found out you were doing these experiments, and that made it worse, because I don’t know what you want with any of this.”

Lex sneers at him.  “At first, I wanted you _dead._ ”

Somehow, that visibly shocks Clark.  As though he’s surprised that Lex might have hated him, when this all began.

As if Lex _doesn’t_ hate him right fucking now.

“You...wanted to kill me?” Clark’s got the gall to look _hurt_ by that little revelation.

“Of course I did,” Lex says.  “Why wouldn’t I? You, exactly what I needed, coming after I didn’t need you anymore.  Saving everyone else, but too late to save _me._ ”  He shakes his head.  “You were like a fucking angel come down from heaven, for everyone else.”

Clark frowns.  “That’s not a good reason to kill someone.”

“I thought you had to be a monster, Clark.  You couldn’t be _real_.”  He laughs, bitterly.  “My father always looked so fucking good in public, too, y’know.”

“Lex…” Oh, and there’s the _pity_.  That, Lex might hate more than anything.

Pity never got him anything.  He’s not going to take it now that it _can’t._

He saved _himself_ , and no one can take that away from him.  No one is _allowed_ to feel bad about his past, because it’s unchangeable.  Feeling bad for him does nothing but make _them_ feel moral for feeling sad on his behalf.

It doesn’t do anything _real_.

“Leave me alone,” he snarls.  “I have things to _do_.  And obviously, so does Superman.”

He turns and stalks into the bowels of the ship, his head a haze of fury.  How _dare_ Clark think that any of this would turn out well?  And how dare _Lex_ think that he could avoid this, that they could maintain the lie any longer than they have?

“Lex!” Clark calls after him, and Lex can _feel_ Clark suddenly behind him.  “I still — I don’t know what you want _now_ , though.”

It’s a clumsy attempt to draw things out, obviously.

Lex doesn’t look at him, but he does pause.  “From you? Absolutely nothing.”

Silence behind him.  A second, two, three, ten.  The two of them standing suspended in the moment, as fragile as glass.

Then, Lex feels, more than hears, the rush of wind accompanying Superman’s departure.

Well.

That’s settled, then.

 

* * *

 

The scout ship is a labyrinth mixed with a science fiction ghost town.

Dark metal gleams in twisted, almost living shapes, lit with dull gold emergency lighting.  Lex moves slowly, his hand along the wall — the texture of the material is smooth, even if the walls themselves are not.  Now and then, something wet squelches under his sneakers, and he feels —

Not like a conqueror.  No, that’s the expectation, but that’s not the feeling, when it comes.

The feeling is that of _being somewhere he does not belong._

He reaches, finally, sunken hip-deep in a pool of water, what appears to be a control hub of some kind.  He moves slowly as he approaches it, so as not to disturb the empty air around him, or the filthy water soaking his legs.  

On this sunken podium, he finds a half-inserted key, carved with a sigil not dissimilar to Superman’s.  He pulls it out, and then, when he moves to push it back in, a magnet of some kind pulls it all the way in with the clang of metal on metal.

The podium, he notes, is shaped like the palm of a hand, or its inverse, anyway.  So he lays his right hand on it, Zod’s fingertips having been returned to their little cases.

If he is to be a thief, then he will at least be a thief on his own merits.

_“Welcome. Ship analysis reveals functionality at 37%.  Would you like to assume command?”_

A simple question, so simple it stuns him silent for a moment.

“Yes — Yes, I would.”

 _“The Kryptonian archive contains knowledge from a hundred thousand different worlds,”_ the computerized, metallic voice tells him, and _there,_ that is the rush he was searching for, clearing away all his disappointments.

He looks around him, the gold lights increasing in their intensity, contrasting with the dark metal and darker water.

“Good.  Teach me.”

A whirring noise above him draws his attention, and soon, a helmet descends in front of him.  “ _This will provide you with an understanding of the ship._ ”

 _Incredible,_ he thinks.  The ship is offering him, in essence, computer-to-brain direct data transfer.  This could change _everything_ , even beyond just Superman and the problem he presents.  Even just this piece of technology could make the process of memorization _obsolete,_ if he understands the computer clearly.

He takes the helmet and situates it on his head, a visor down over his eyes.  Semi-prehensile appendages separate from the helmet, holding his head in place inside it.

 _“Data transfer initiating._ ”

Then, the pain begins.

He should have expected it, should have asked.  His brain is on _fire_ , schematics and computer code and foreign physics and mathematics flashing across his consciousness before ramming themselves into his long-term memory, an agonizing process.

It could take instants.  It could take minutes. But when it’s over, he goes limp, almost hanging from the machine.

But he knows what it’s called, now.  He knows the words in Kryptonese, and their English translations, as easily as he knows the parts to his desktop computer rig at home.

 _Christ._  This is — this is _impossible._  This is _everything._

“I want more,” he calls out to the computer.  “Give me Krypton.”

_“Data transfer: Kryptonian history: initiating.”_

“ _Data transfer: Kryptonese: initiating.”_

“ _Data transfer: Kryptonian-Apokolyptian war: initiating.”_

 

* * *

 

Recovery is, ultimately, impossible.

One _cannot_ do what Lex has done, and go back to the person they were before.

He’s fine, his brain spinning, conceptualizing, contextualizing constantly, any time his focus is broken for even a moment on the day-to-day tasks of his life.

He has Mercy cancel all his meetings, claiming a 24-hour bug.

That’s exactly how much time he intends to give himself.  His life can only wait so long for him to remake his own mind around the flood of data he’s taken in.

A human brain was not really _meant_ to house so much.  But Lex has always pushed limits.  

If this works, if he can take it and use it, he can change Earth forever.  He can use Krypton’s failures to bolster an entire planet — talk about a _legacy_.

For the first time, knowledge truly is power.  

No one else on Earth, except _maybe_ Clark, has this knowledge.  And Clark _clearly_ does not intend to use it.

He lays back in his bed, his eyes tracking the ceiling, his mind’s eye laying out images for him, flashbulb half-memories of, essentially, Krypton’s greatest hits, and how the planet was destroyed.

By its own hubris, much like Zod.   _Dru-Zod_ , son of _Lyta-Zod,_ daughter of _Jayna-Zod_.  He could give the whole history of the Zod line, from its inception to its destruction, dispassionate as a schoolboy.

But he has _touched_ the throat of the dead, borrowed his blood and his skin, and that matters.

Blood talks.  And it seems it spoke just as clearly on Krypton as it does here on Earth.  

He closes his eyes.  Krypton, in its hubris, believed that it could not be bettered.  Krypton died for that belief, except for a child and three war criminals, and then that child triumphed in battle over military officers _bred_ for those purposes.

It’s incredible, really, to think about that.  Kal-El, son of Jor-El and Lara-El, made in a way distinct from his people even by the circumstances of his birth.

Unanticipated.  Unaccounted for.  

Clark gets to create himself, because the world that he comes from is gone, and because his existence was not even supposed to _happen._

He would have been as much an outsider on Krypton as he is on Earth.

The thought unsettles him.  Alienation. Can they really be so different?  Isolated by every world that can hold them — does it mean that they are _suited_ for one another?

As if to answer the question, his phone vibrates beside him.

_Lex...I’m sorry for lying to you for as long as I did.  Is there some way we can fix this?_

His throat tightens.  Tears sting at the corners of his eyes.  There is no fixing this; there is no fixing _him_ , and that is the _point_.

_That’s why he did it._

The theft of this history was meant to tear him away from the man — but it has failed.

He blocks Clark’s number, and then hurls his phone at the wall, the glass shattering on impact.  There is nothing he can do. There is nothing either of them can do.

Lex is become the monster, again and again, as always.  It’s how he protects himself from vulnerability.

He _cannot_ allow himself to be so.  Not even for Clark.

Not even for love.

The word burns in his brain, because he has to recognize it now: he is in love with that which can destroy him.  That which, in essence, already _has._

He is not the man he was, months ago, eyes and throat catching just on _sight_ of Clark.

He is not even the man he was yesterday, spitting furious truth because he couldn’t stand the lying anymore.

Instead, this is him; he lays in his bed, cut off from the world, watching Krypton’s history and science unfold in front of him, knowing that he cannot share it with the one person who most deserves to have it.

When he starts to cry, he barely even feels it.

 

* * *

 

_The sky is burning, and the Red Dragon rises._

 

* * *

 

_In one vision, Lex finds himself armored in green and purple, the colors muted by desert sand and wind, as the three Motherboxes unify in a horrifying, bright flash._

_When he wakes, he is on another world, its sky aflame as well, wrapped in heavy garments, crouched beside a supply truck.  Bruce Wayne holds a spear fashioned from Kryptonite, and he is ready to kill._

_The Motherboxes destroy them all, first._

_Another waking, another vision: this time, he is aboard an Apokoliptian vessel, wrists bound and on his knees, as the unified Motherboxes cover the earth in light and fire.  Beside him stands Steppenwolf, Darkseid’s most trusted lieutenant. A dark smirk cuts open his pale face, shaded by his massive horned helmet._

_“You showed us the way here, Luthor.  You sold your world. How does it feel?”_

 

* * *

 

_The next night, he dreams of Clark, dying in his arms._

_Lex can’t save him from the spear in his chest, the emblem of House El split by the blade, the sickly green light of Kryptonite bathing Clark’s flagging expression._

_Lex clutches at his hand, weeping, as his pulse slows to a stop._

 

* * *

 

He wakes up gasping, curled up in the fetal position in bed, his body trying to protect him in sleep from that which is just...in his head, now.

“God,” he curses, his voice an open wound.  

He fantasizes, as if it were possible, what it would feel like if Clark was here in bed with him.  Clark would hold him close, to remind him that he’s here, would press his lips to the bandages still keeping his burn scars healing; he would ask Lex what was wrong, but he wouldn’t press him when he refuses to answer.

His chest is a festering wound, because he can’t _have_ that anymore.  

Clark isn’t _his_ anymore, not even as a lie two people tell each other.  Clark is gone from him, sent away _by_ him.

This is his empty bed.

He supposes it’s only fair that he lie in it.

 

* * *

 

It’s an awful idea, to go to Gotham.

So of course, when the Gotham Library requests its donations, offering a party not unlike the one Lex hosted, he certainly makes the choice to attend.

“Mister Luthor,” Mercy says, with more steel than he’s ever seen from her, “This is a terrible idea.  I think you know that.”

He doesn’t pay her to tell him to stop.  “Write the check anyway.”

At least in Gotham, he won’t see Clark.

 

* * *

 

He wears white to this one, white suit, white shoes, white shirt, white vest.  His hair stands out against all of it, and he can see the high society of Gotham staring at him.

Good.  Let them stare at him — he’s different, now, and he knows it, so why shouldn’t they?

“I can’t say I expected to see you here,” Bruce says, from his left.  “Especially so soon after what happened to your lab.” He’s holding two champagne flutes.  “If you need space, we can work something out here at Wayne Industries.”

Lex cracks his neck.  “I appreciate the offer, but no.  The thing I was working on, the materials were destroyed in the fire.”

He’s lying through his teeth.  

“Pity,” Bruce says.  “What was it?”

“Reverse engineering a bit of the aliens’ tech.”  That’s safe enough to admit. “I have a contract, so I have a little bit more access than most.”

 _More access than you_ goes unsaid.

“Fair point.  Still, if there’s anything I can do, you do have my number.”  Bruce gives him an enticing smile, offering him one of the flutes.

Lex takes it.  “I do. I can’t promise anything, Bruce, but if something comes up, I’ll let you know.”

Then, just out of the corner of his eye, his sees something grey stop short.  He turns his head, and — oh — _oh —_

His breath catches.  

Clark is standing there, his eyes on Lex and Bruce, as though he is just as shocked to see Lex as Lex is to see him.

And then he turns away, moving toward a door into another room, out of sight, something like disappointment on his face.

Lex can’t — Lex _can’t_  —

He passes the still-full glass of champagne back to Bruce.  “Excuse me, I have to —“

And then, not waiting for an answer, he follows Clark out of the room.

The next room over is full of desks — note-taking desks, he thinks, because this _is_ a library, after all — and Clark is already on the other side of it.  Lex moves faster.

“Clark, I —“

Clark swallows, visibly.  “You, uh, looked like you were having a nice talk with —“

“No, actually,” Lex interrupts, “I was lying through my teeth about Superman.”

That draws Clark up short.  “What?”

Lex crosses the room, his voice low when he’s finally close enough to continue: “I told him, the green stone, the Kryptonite, I said it had all been destroyed.”  He doesn’t wait; he curls his hand into the front of Clark’s shirt. “Hell, I didn’t even say it _was_ Kryptonite.  My guess is that’s what he’ll infer.”

“Does he know?” Clark asks, wrapping a hand around Lex’s wrist.

“About you?” Lex shakes his head.  “No. Not that I know of, anyway. I don’t think he even suspects anything.  Except, well, you and me being on better terms than I am with Superman.”

Clark nods.  “Okay. I — how are you?”

Lex swallows.  “I — I — _shit_.  Clark, in the ship, the way it’s controlled, I —“ He’s been back twice more.  

The nightmares keep getting worse.

“It’s inside my head, now, all of, of Krypton’s history, and science, and language.  I can’t even — I couldn’t explain it if I tried, how my brain is holding it all, but it is.”  He rubs a hand over his face. “And I think, I think something’s coming.”

Clark’s hands shift to his shoulders.  “Lex, I don’t — I don’t understand what you mean.  How did you…?”

“After I argued with Superman,” he says, because he can’t make things _too_ obvious, if anyone is listening, “I went down into the ship.  I found its control panel. Assumed command. There was this helmet, and it was like — like a USB transfer, from the ship, to my brain.”

“Holy…” Clark exhales.  “That’s — that’s not necessarily good.  Your brain’s not meant to hold that kind of information.”

Lex swallows.  “Nightmares. I’m having nightmares, that’s why I’m sure something’s coming.”  He feels — ragged, worn out, stretched. “From Apokolips. Somehow, somehow they _know_ , and it’s my fault, and they’re coming.

“...I think we need to get out of here,” Clark says, squeezing Lex’s shoulders briefly.  “So we can really talk about this.”

Lex nods.  “Right, I’ll — I’ll get Mercy.”

He steps away from Clark, and somehow, as he moves away, he’s surprised when Clark follows.

 

* * *

 

They’re quiet as they make their way back to Metropolis.  Clark and Lex sit in the back of the car, and here, dressed in white, Lex feels exposed.

Mercy doesn’t take them to the Tower, or the mansion.  Instead, she winds her way down the grid of the city, making their way to somewhere Lex has never been, even though he knows the address by heart, and could give directions as easily as he could to his own home.

He doesn’t notice right away, but eventually, he realizes: they’re going to Clark’s apartment.

Clark reaches out across the backseat, his hand landing on Lex’s.  “I thought it might be easier,” he murmurs. “So I asked Mercy to take us to my place.”

Lex nods, not sure what he can say.  He feels _strange_.

They pull to an idling stop, and Mercy opens the doors with a push of a button.  They swing up — butterfly doors, an after-market addition on this particular car — and the cold of the winter night slides into the car like an additional passenger.

Clark gets out first, and offers Lex his hand.

Lex takes it, and rises to the sidewalk.  Behind him the doors close, and Mercy leaves, the low hum of the engine vanishing into the noises of the city.

Clark lives in a second-floor walkup practically the size of a shoebox — its main redeeming feature is a terrace leading into a discreet alleyway.  A smart move, for a man that can fly.

“I’d apologize for the state of the place, but, I’m guessing you already knew,” Clark murmurs, as he opens the door.

It stings, just a little, because he does know.  He knows _so much_ about Clark.  Because he’d been so afraid, in those months after the Battle of Metropolis, that he needed to know everything.

“It’s...homey,” Lex says, softly, forcing himself to take it in.  

The insides had been something of a mystery to him, not wanting Superman to find out he was being watched.  But now, he’s here, and there’s exposed brick and a lumpy-looking sofa, and quilts, and an overall sense of _living within one’s means._

It fits Clark, and the fact that Lex _knows_ that is frightening.

Clark’s hand finds the small of his back.  “We — we should talk. About everything.”

He’s right, and Lex hates that he’s right.  But he is, and Lex nods, bowing his head a little.  “Yeah. We should.” With what’s coming, they need to.  They can’t have any of this muddying the waters.

“Come sit,” Clark says, leading him to the bed rather than the couch.  It’s smaller than Lex’s, of course, but that’s fine. “Let’s talk.”

Lex nods, but his mouth is dry as he sits down; he doesn’t know what to say, how to start.  He toes out of his shoes, to give himself something to do that isn’t looking at Clark. “I...I should...apologize.  For perpetuating the lie.”

“Me too,” Clark says, reaching out to touch Lex’s cheek.  

Lex blushes under the touch, but says nothing.

Clark’s fingers slide up to where the burns have scarred over.  “You look — I think you look more yourself, like this.”

“What, with the scars?” Lex asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I think so.  It — you spend so much time playing a part.  I think we both do.” Clark shrugs one shoulder.  “It’s good to see you moving away from that, even if you sort of have to.”

Lex blushes a little.  “What do you see, when you look at me?”

Clark pauses, his fingers slipping into Lex’s hair.  “I’m not sure,” he admits. “I don’t — I don’t know how much of it was real, before.”

“Most of it,” he admits.  “Especially when we were in bed together.”

“That’s — that’s good.”  Clark bites his lip. “I was — I was worried about hurting you, you know.”

Lex shakes his head.  “You didn’t hurt me.” Except emotionally, and that wasn’t even really Clark’s doing.  “I think that was the hardest part.”

“You thought I would?”

“No one ever _hasn’t_ , when it comes down to it,” Lex says.  “And I — I don’t want your _pity_ about that.”  That much, he’s still clear on.

Clark shifts a little, flushing.  “It’s not pity.”

“It doesn’t _do_ anything, whatever it is,” Lex says, and means it.  “So...I don’t want it. I’ve been through a lot, Clark, and no one was there to fix it.  It’s not _fixable_ , at this point.  I am what I am.”

It feels almost ironic, to say that, in those words.   _I am what I am.  I am what is._

He pushes the thought aside.  He just wants Clark to see him, and accept that this is what he is.  

“I...I wish I could’ve helped.”  

The worst part, Lex thinks, is that Clark’s being honest about that.  Lex doesn’t know what to _do_ with it, with Clark’s sorrow, heavier in his hands in this moment than Lex’s long-scarred-over pains.  Clark honestly wishes he could’ve saved Lex.

Lex looks away.  “Well, you couldn’t.  So...leave it in the past.  That’s where it lives.”

Clark’s hand slides to the back of his neck.  “I can try,” he murmurs.

“...Thank you.”  It feels strange, the whole of it.  He leans into the touch a little bit.  “Pretty much everything else was real,” he murmurs.  “From the first date onward.”

“Really?” Clark asks, a little surprised.

“I hated myself for it, but yeah.”  Lex turns back to him, leaning in a little.  “I wanted so badly to prove you were a monster, so that I could destroy you.”

Clark leans in, now, his forehead touching Lex’s.  “I...I felt guilty from the outset, pursuing you when you'd made your opinion  on Superman so clear.  But...it felt good, being with you. I wanted more of that.”

Lex can't help it; he laughs a little.  “You wanted to be selfish for once,” he teases.

Clark immediately flushes guiltily.  “Yeah.”

“I don't think that's a bad thing,” Lex murmurs.  “I mean, I was being selfish, too. I wanted to keep you, and was disgusted with myself for that.”

“You wanted to keep me?”

There's teasing in his voice, and this is all so preposterous it can _only_ be real.  They're sitting on Clark's bed, in Clark's apartment, in cocktail party attire, foreheads resting against each other.  

Lex can only nod.  “You were — despite the lie, you were always so genuine.  You did things that people can't really fake.” He flushes.  “I wanted that.”

“You can have it, you know,” Clark murmurs.  “Before we had that, when I sent you the flowers, I meant them.”

“I panicked about that,” Lex admits.  “Because how could you mean that, when we were lying to each other?  It felt...it felt cruel, and I felt stupid for wanting to believe you really did love me.”

Clark squeezes Lex’s hand with his free one.  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you knew, and I wanted — if I couldn’t be honest about myself, I at least wanted to be honest about how I feel about you, about this, whatever it is.”

“You said it was love,” Lex murmurs.  

“Yeah.”

“It’s love for me, too.”

 

* * *

 

They wind up making love, there, in Clark’s bed, just barely big enough for both of them.

“Mattresses are expensive,” Clark apologizes.

“I’ll buy you one,” Lex murmurs.  “I know you love mine.” He’s unbuttoning his shirt; beneath it, the binder he’s wearing is also white.  That feels, well, poetic in some sense.

This is where they begin again.

Clark pauses in his undressing, his coat and vest already discarded and his shirt half-unbuttoned, when Lex is down to just his binder and pants.  His hand slides up Lex’s stomach, stopping at the edge of the binder. “You’re gorgeous.”

“You think so?” Lex preens a little under the praise.

“Of course,” Clark says, grinning.  “And I really do think the haircut suits you.”

Lex’s smile gets a little softer.  “I do like seeing people react to it,” he says, his fingers sliding under the hem of his binder.  “A visible reminder of my difference, it puts them off-kilter. They don’t know what to say.”

Clark finishes unbuttoning his shirt with one hand, sliding it off so that it’s hanging from his arm; he clearly doesn’t want to stop touching Lex.  “You like doing that to people,” he says, his voice fond. “You kept doing that to me, in the beginning.”

“Yes, I did,” Lex says, slowing removing his binder.  He watches Clark’s eyes following the hem, and enjoys the feeling of Clark’s hands settling just beneath the curve of his breasts.  He was never busty, but Clark is the only partner he’s had since his transition who has seen them.

He hasn’t told Clark yet, but he thinks Clark might suspect it.

“I like being able to touch you,” Clark murmurs, his hand sliding around to the skin of his back.  “I like that you want me to.”

Lex shivers.  “I want you,” he says, because at least that’s succinct.

Clark grins at him, and finally gets his shirt all the way off.  His skin is smooth and warm, and Lex’s hands slide up, carding through his chest-hair and finding his shoulders.  

“I’ve imagined this,” Clark confesses.  “Bringing you back here, and making love to you in my bed.”

Lex flushes.  No one has ever wanted to make love to him, before Clark.  “Show me what you imagined,” he murmurs. “I want to know how you imagined it.”

Clark’s fingers find his hair, and then he leans them down, pressing Lex down into the bed.  “I want to get you to relax, that’s the most important part. You’re always so tense, and I worry about that.”

“I’m fine,” Lex reassures him, one hand finding Clark’s face.  “See? Not tense.”

It’s true.  He feels — he feels _safe_ , under Clark.  Clark makes him feel safe.  Clark makes him feel wanted, not just desired, and there is a pivotal difference there.

“Good,” Clark murmurs, turning his head to kiss the palm of Lex’s hand.

“What next?” Lex asks, flushing at Clark’s open affection even now.  It’s still new, even though it’s wanted.

Clark leans down and kisses him.  “I imagine getting you naked, so I can look at you.  I like looking at you — reminds me how lucky I am that you let me do this with you.”

Lex flushes.  “Undress me, then,” he murmurs.

Clark smirks a little and does, one-handed as he undoes Lex’s fly.  “Pop your hips up for me?” he asks, and Lex obeys, and soon, they’re both completely naked, bare before each other in more than the literal sense.

Lex wraps his arms around Clark’s neck and pulls him close.  “I want you inside me,” he says, and tonight, for once, the words don’t make him feel hollow.

Clark smiles, and kisses him.  “I should open you up first,” he reminds him, gently.

“I want to take it,” Lex murmurs back.  “I want to feel you open me on your cock, Clark, I want it so much.”

“Okay,” Clark murmurs, and they’ve diverged from the fantasy into an even more beautiful reality as Lex spreads his legs and Clark lines himself up.

Lex is just wet enough that it doesn’t hurt when Clark pushes inside him, just stretches the rim of his pussy taught for a moment as the head presses in.  Then, it’s all the deep pleasure of being filled by Clark’s cock.

“God, Lex, I’ve missed this,” Clark manages, seating himself inside Lex and pausing for a long moment.  “I’ve missed you.”

“I — I’ve missed you, too.  I...I love you.” He hadn’t meant to say it like this, _now_ , Clark’s cock inside him, half sex-drunk and half love-drunk, but this is how it comes out, and he just blushes, his head falling back on the pillow.  

“I love you too,” Clark says, beaming down at him before sealing their mouths together in a kiss.

Soon, Clark starts to move, in slow, shallow thrusts keeping him mostly-inside Lex at all times.  Lex moans, his legs wrapping tight around Clark’s waist. He’s never felt like this before, not even with Clark, but he loves it.

If this is what being in love is, he wants to keep it for the rest of his life.

“I’m getting close,” Clark mumbles, a blush across his face.  “It’s been a while, since we…”

“Don’t you touch yourself?” Lex asks, teasing.

“Not recently,” he admits.  “It felt — it felt wrong to fantasize about you when you were angry with me, and it felt wrong to fantasize about someone else, too.”

Lex can’t help but kiss him, long and deep, because he will never deserve this man, but he wants to.  He wants to at least make this love worth it for Clark, despite everything Lex is.

Clark moans, and his thrusts increase in pace and strength, which only makes Lex moan.

It’s not long until Clark comes with a strangled moan inside him, and Lex can’t help but come, too, his cunt clenching around Clark’s cock.  It extends the life of their orgasms, and Lex clutches at Clark to keep him close.

Eventually, though, they both fall limp, and the weight of Clark’s body above him is somehow comforting rather than painful.  

Clark kisses him.  “I love you,” he murmurs.  

Lex smiles.  “I know.”

 

* * *

 

In the morning, Lex wakes with Clark beside him, just before the sunrises.

Part of him can’t believe what happened last night, and he exhales, staring up at the ceiling.  Clark loves him. Clark _loves_ him.

Lex has never been satisfied in his life, but he is right now, his heart full at the thought that this is something he is allowed to _keep._  No one can take it from him, because Clark has chosen to be here.

Then, the memories of his visions come crashing back.

Apokolips.  Steppenwolf.   _Darkseid._

They are coming.

His breath breaks, and he sits up, getting out of Clark’s bed.  He needs air. He needs to be alone for a moment, to _think_.

He wraps himself in Clark’s flannel bathrobe, which just about swallows him whole, but feels good against his naked skin.  It might be that it smells like Clark, he’s not sure, but he proceeds, barefoot, onto the terrace.

There’s a little chair and table out there, and he sits down.  He can see a sliver of sky, and it’s beginning to turn purple at the edges, just above the city skyline.

He watches it, and thinks.

Apokolips is coming.  He knows that. They _know_ what he did in the scout ship, and they’re coming.  Soon enough, the whole world will be in danger, at his hands.

So he has to help stop it.

He will have to approach the superhumans.  He’ll have to approach _Batman._ Shit.

Diana Prince shouldn’t be too hard to find.  She came out to Metropolis. If he can find her first, he should.  

Then, Silas and Victor Stone, see what can be done with them — because they _have_ a Motherbox, though they don’t know what it is.

Arthur Curry will be headed north, as the King Tide is coming.

Finally Barry Allen, who is doing minor superheroism in Central City.  He should be the easiest to approach.

“Lex?” Clark’s voice from inside.  “Are you okay?”

Lex nods.  “We still — we still need to talk about Steppenwolf, and my...my visions.”

Clark nods, joining him on the terrace, dressed in a pair of grey sweatpants.  “Right. You said you were seeing — aliens?”

“Yes.”  Lex exhales.  “I think, it has to do with what I did in the belly of the ship.  When I took control, it must’ve sent out some kind of signal. And since it’s keyed into my brain, now, I’m having these...visions.”

“And they’re dangerous?”

“They’re out for blood.  There’s these — these cubes, they’re called Motherboxes.  There’s at least one on Earth right now. If these aliens, these Apokolyptians, if they gather three of them together, that’s it, game over for Earth.”  Lex shudders. “They know about me. And they can hurt you. I think they know that, too.”

“So, what do we do?” Clark asks, taking his hand.

Lex squeezes Clark’s hand.  “I don’t think we can do this alone.  There are — there are other people, with powers.  I’ve been watching. I think we’ll need to approach them, bare minimum.”

Clark nods.  “Okay. Then we’ll do that.  Not right now, though. I think...I think I’d just like to sit with you for a while.”

“Okay,” Lex echoes.  “I’d — I’d like that.

Together, through that little sliver of sky, they watch the sunrise, and for the first time in a very long time, Lex Luthor finally has reasons to hope.


End file.
